TikTok bets people will watch videos—and ads—on bigger screens

Addicted to watching TikTok videos? US consumers will soon be able to keep watching—even when their phones are put away.

A new offering from TikTok, called Out of Phone, is bringing TikTok videos and campaigns outside of the app itself. There are a few out-of-home options, including “Out of Phone: Billboard,” which will amplify TikTok campaigns on billboards, and “Out of Phone: Cinema,” which will run TikTok videos and ads on the silver screen during preshows that play before movie screenings. “Out of Home: Other Screens,” the third option, will run TikTok content on screens in bars, restaurants, airports, and other locations.

The content, which will be distributed globally, will be tailored to different audiences and will be regularly refreshed “to share only the latest and most engaging” videos pulled from the app itself, TikTok detailed in a press release. Digital platforms like Vevo and in-theater advertisers like Screenvision have already partnered with TikTok to display and distribute Out of Phone videos.

The out-of-home offering, released Tuesday during Advertising Week, is just one product for marketers that TikTok has debuted this year against a backdrop of increasing regulatory pressure. The short-form video app previously rolled out Pulse Premiere, an ad format offering ad inventory that is placed right after content from TikTok’s publisher and media partners like Disney, NBCUniversal, and Condé Nast. This summer, TikTok waded into out-of-home through an advertising deal with Redbox to run TikTok videos on Redbox kiosks. And the platform rolled out text posts, which marketers told Marketing Brew could help boost ad revenue by increasing time spent on the platform.

Perhaps its biggest product debut this year, TikTok Shop, went live in the US last month. The e-commerce feature, a rival to sites like Amazon and Temu, allows advertisers to buy Shop ads and promote their storefronts on the app. (As part of TikTok Shop, the company leased a sizable amount of warehouses around the country to house TikTok Shop products, per The Information.)

Even as TikTok expands its ad offerings, it’s exploring other options for monetization. Earlier this year, TikTok began testing an ad-free, paid subscription in one market in Europe.