If you haven’t heard of the popular app TikTok yet, you’re in for a real surprise. TikTok has been heavily on the rise and taking over the social media game very quickly. According to Hubspot, the rising app already has over 1.5 billion downloads, with 800 million of those being monthly active users. You may be wondering how it could possibly be rising anymore than it already has. That’s the crazy part. It is.

So what is TikTok?

According to Influencer Marketing Hub, the TikTok app's main purpose is to serve users with short videos with a maximum length of 15 seconds. Users can create videos and directly add filters, stickers, music clips and special effects to their content. Videos are then shared, which can be interacted with through comments, likes and follows.

One thing that has made TikTok so popular, is that you aren’t forced to sign up to the app. Once it’s downloaded and opened, the content is already there ready for your viewing pleasure. The app has a “For You” feature, which uses an algorithm to suggest relevant videos, or you can watch videos of content creators you are following.

Similar to Vine, and it’s predecessor, the lip-syncing app musical.ly (which was bought out and merged with TikTok), TikTok has followed suit and taken the social media world by storm. Mixed with the apps daily viral videos, challenges and trends, the perfect recipe for success amongst the younger audience was created for TikTok.

This is truly the calm before the storm for TikTok. It’s just getting started.

The addictive nature of the content has user’s watching almost an hour’s worth of content each time they open the app - with the average video being around 10-15 seconds long (Hubspot). Just think about how many videos that must be in an hour!

All these downloads and daily active users provide TikTok with more room for improvement, innovation and incentives to maximize the apps potential, similar to past success stories like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat.

TikTok has an enormous opportunity ahead of them to be the next large scale social media advertiser. They’ve established an impressive user base, and now they are entering into the realm of advertising. They’ll be competing with the likes of social media giants; Facebook, Instagram, YouTube etc.

The app has an enormous amount of potential to be a great marketing tool, if used correctly and by the right brands. If your brand's target demographic is under 30 years old, you should probably be on TikTok.

Lifestyle brands are able to seamlessly integrate with TikTok user’s content. With many of the posts based around music, dance, comedy and other challenges that are meme worthy - brands are capitalizing on the opportunity to get in on it.

So, how are you supposed to be advertising on a platform that is filled with random meme worthy and at times unprofessional content? There’s tons of ways. Big name brands have already begun to capitalize on TikTok. Influencer marketing and Hashtag Challenges have already proven to be successful.

According to Swat.io, brands like Adidas, Apple, Guess and Pizza Hut have taken the leap and been involved in paid campaigns, hashtag challenges and working alongside popular TikTok influencers (influencers are being paid $500 to join the app and create content) . There are tons of advertising formats available now on TikTok, which are proving to be successful. TikTok has even implemented “Shop Now” buttons, encouraging online retailers to advertise on the platform.

TikTok Advertising is still fresh and brand new going into the year 2020, but as this story unravels, we will see the true influence of this new social media powerhouse in the years to come.