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The grand final of this year鈥檚 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Liverpool, UK, on May 13. Attracting a Super Bowl-sized audience, tourists, and viewing parties, the competition鈥檚 global reach will provide marketers and retailers with a notable opportunity to drive brand awareness and sales.

UK retail sales are performing better than expected, with consumers still spending despite high inflation鈥攂ut ecommerce will lose further share this year as shoppers continue returning to stores and cut nonessential spending.

TikTok aims to quadruple the size of its global ecommerce business in 2023. But TikTok Shop鈥檚 US rollout has been complicated鈥攁nd that could have implications for the company鈥檚 aggressive goal.

Nearly 50% of social network users in Thailand will be TikTok users, giving the country the highest TikTok penetration in the world, according to our forecast. The US will rank second, with 45.3% of its social users on TikTok. We expect penetration in the US will be as high as 49.1% by the end of 2026.

Total media time is flattening out in the UK after the artificial bump brought about by the pandemic. Video consumption, though, via multiple platforms, is one area where marketers can count on continued consumer engagement.

UK consumers have a voracious appetite for digital video content, but the cost-of-living crisis is boosting ad-supported options, particularly broadcaster video-on-demand services. Netflix鈥檚 pivot to an ad tier, meanwhile, may have legs.

The UK is seeing stagnant social network user growth. But while reach remains huge, marketers should look at how their target markets are spread across platforms because this is where the real change is happening.

TikTok is democratizing the influencer game. 鈥淲hat TikTok does really nicely is peer-to-peer marketing. It feels much more like a community recommendation, so people are much more open to then trying those products,鈥� said Perkins.

This issue came to light when personal data of a British TikTok user, who lodged a complaint about another user's behavior, was shared on Lark, making it accessible to ByteDance employees globally. Driver's licenses of US users and potentially illegal content were also visible to ByteDance employees on Lark.

Few US merchants are selling goods on TikTok Shop: Many are reluctant to invest time and resources in the platform given the widespread speculation that it will be banned or sold.

TikTok鈥檚 latest strategy to boost social commerce sales relies on AI: The social platform is testing a feature that automatically links users to TikTok Shop without creator input.

TikTok deal with IMDb enables discovery feature: Users can link to TV and movie content in their videos.

Now 23% of these young consumers use it almost exclusively, according to an online HarrisPoll of 2,118 US and UK adults in 2023. What 鈥渃ash stuffing鈥� entails: Gen Zers are withdrawing large amounts of cash and budgeting by putting it into envelopes, according to Newsweek. The envelopes are organized and labeled as specific "buckets" for various expenditures.

While overall social network user numbers are rising slowly in the UK, there鈥檚 much greater movement in terms of the platforms being used.

TikTok Shop expands in Europe as US fate remains uncertain: Launch in France, Germany, and Italy underscores push for growth amid pressure to boost sales.

Australia, France, New Zealand, the UK, Taiwan, and the EU have banned TikTok on government devices. India, once its largest audience, banned the app in 2020 after a dispute with China. Canada鈥檚 move to shut down TikTok鈥檚 offices pertains to its owner ByteDance鈥檚 connection to Beijing and concerns over data security. However, that shutdown makes it tougher for the government to address its concerns.