IPSOS Brand Lift Study Reveals TikTok Advertising More Effective than TV & Digital Norms

IPSOS Brand Lift Study Reveals TikTok Advertising More Effective than TV & Digital Norms

July 26, 2021

TikTok For Business, Editorial Team

InsightsPerspectivesTrust & Safety

The first television ads were shown to an unsuspecting (and unprepared world) 80 years ago this June. Back then, there was less than a handful of channels that catered to broad, regionally aligned, segments of the population.

Things have changed a lot since then. Now, every household receives in excess of 100 channels in the MENA region. Each channel caters, through their content, to more specific, sometimes even niche audiences, and allows advertisers to target far more precisely than they could all those years ago.

But TV isn’t the only medium that’s changed. Heck, along the way we witnessed the emergence of brand new mediums, digital advertising, and today, businesses have realized that advertising can be more than just broadly targeted, passive and one way.

And while digital presented incredible opportunities when it came to how people could receive content and advertising - it couldn’t compete with the context in which television did. TV captured people’s attention, most of it in the modern, multiscreen world. And it was sound on and fully immersive. And, yes, today’s apps create personal feeds - which helps engagement, but those feeds aren’t really personal. As in they aren’t based on what you like - they are based on what the people you follow post or share or like.

So, you can have big immersion with no personalisations of content or you can have small immersion with ad personalisations.

Recently, in a pretty seismic shift, a new player has emerged in this space, the content graph. The premise? The only thing that dictates what a user saw next was what the user indicated they liked; a constantly curated and refined stream of short, snappy content - Enter TikTok.

Tapping into the audiences’ quest for engaging with fun, authentic content in a single-screen format, TikTok’s short-form video content has provided users and businesses alike with a platform to participate while engaging with a community known for its creativity, ingenuity, and joy. For brands and businesses, this has enabled them to get innovative with their advertising and place their brand at the forefront of dynamic storytelling and creative content to connect with today’s generation.

Tapping into the audiences’ quest for engaging with fun, authentic content in a single-screen format, TikTok’s short-form video content has provided users and businesses alike with a platform to participate while engaging with a community known for its creativity, ingenuity, and joy. For brands and businesses, this has enabled them to get innovative with their advertising and place their brand at the forefront of dynamic storytelling and creative content to connect with today’s generation.

IPSOS conducted a study on advertising campaigns in Saudi Arabia and UAE

Although TikTok advertising was only launched in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and UAE in 2020, a recent IPSOS study has found efficacious ad impact results, even more promising than those of TV advertising at its prime and even better than digital advertising today among TikTok users. This recent IPSOS study - in which the market research company conducted a meta-analysis on advertising campaigns in Saudi Arabia and UAE that ran from August 2020 to January 2021- included brands and businesses from diverse sectors such as beauty and lifestyle, F&B, FMCGs, telecom, electronics, luxury goods and government and civil services. The findings of this study confirmed that TikTok delivered higher ‘Ad Recall’, greater ‘Uplift in Brand Awareness’ and an increase on ‘Purchase Intent’ in both Saudi Arabia and UAE in 2020.

Tapping into the audiences’ quest for engaging with fun, authentic content in a single-screen format, TikTok’s short-form video content has provided users and businesses alike with a platform to participate while engaging with a community known for its creativity, ingenuity, and joy. For brands and businesses, this has enabled them to get innovative with their advertising and place their brand at the forefront of dynamic storytelling and creative content to connect with today’s generation.

The study demonstrated that in 2020:

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia

TikTok delivered 59% Ad Recall which was 1.23x that of TV advertising at 48% and 1.84x that of Digital Advertising at 32% among TikTok users

🇦🇪 UAE

While TV Ad Recall was not closely monitored, there was a similar trend of increase with TikTok delivering 55% Ad Recall which was 1.62x that of Digital Advertising at 34%.

TikTok also delivered much better results at uplifting Brand Awareness. In both Unaided and Aided Brand Awareness, TikTok delivered an average uplift of 6.10% and 10.20% respectively in Saudi Arabia, which is higher than both TV and Digital. In the UAE, Unaided Brand Awareness indicated an average uplift of 6.20% which was higher than TV and Digital, and Aided Brand Awareness indicated an average uplift of 7.20% which was almost equal to TV but higher than Digital.

And finally, TikTok has also proven to be the best marketing channel setting unprecedented benchmarks on Purchase Intent which is crucial to a business' bottom line. Purchase Intent saw an increase with +6.20% in Saudi Arabia, which is 1.13x more than that of TV at 5.50%, and 2.21x more than Digital at 2.80%. While in the UAE, Purchase Intent saw an increase with +10.1%, which is 1.87x more than that of TV at 5.40%, and 3.26x more than Digital at 3.10%.  

So what sets TikTok apart from the rest?

This brings us to the essential question of what sets advertising on TikTok apart from the rest, and more importantly, how it was able to overtake the long-standing TV and digital advertising. The simple answer to this comes down to the platform’s unique format:

TikTok delivers its video and ads content in a sound on, full-screen short form video format with minimal distractions.

This allows marketers to explore new and fun ways to position their brands, using trends and styles of the platform’s native content to effortlessly immerse themselves into the community.

By making TikToks, a brand’s message sits with all the other user-generated content in a person’s ‘For You’ feed without disrupting their experience. TikTok's For You page feed integrates ads with organic and creator content seamlessly and allows ads to target viewers based on many of their demographic and topical interests – making it less likely for them to skip or even feel interrupted by ad content. In fact, a study conducted earlier in the year by Nielsen confirmed TikTok’s user favorability and engagement on advertising. The findings indicated that many TikTok users perceive the platform to be ad-friendly, with 8 out of 10 users stating they found advertising on TikTok to be unique compared to other platforms and 59% felt that the ads blend seamlessly with the organic content.

In the current media landscape, it is important to recognize that businesses are being faced with limited resources and advertising options to grow their businesses. TikTok’s success lies in the fact that TikTok for Business was created with aspiring business leaders in mind, addressing their need for an easy-to-use platform to create and manage their campaigns and grow their businesses. With the clear understanding that the audience would rather engage with entertaining content than be blatantly sold to, brands have finally discovered the opportunity on TikTok to naturally sit alongside other native content, giving brands the best chance of being discovered and not skipped over unlike traditional TV and digital advertising platforms.