Brands spent nearly $4 billion on TikTok ads in 2023: report

These days, TikTok is omnipresent in the culture. And advertisers are taking advantage.

In Q4 of 2023, ad spend on the platform reached $1.2 billion, according to a report from MediaRadar; that was a 43% increase from the $805 million advertisers spent in the first quarter of the year.

Amazon, Apple, Comcast, DoorDash, and The Walt Disney Company spent the most money advertising on the platform in 2023. On average, 11,800 companies spent $318 million per month.

Ad spend climbed throughout the year, hitting $896 million in Q2 and $962 million in Q3. In all of 2023, almost 30,000 companies advertising more than 35,500 brands spent $3.8 billion on TikTok, the advertising intelligence platform found.

TikTok’s popularity appears unlikely to slow anytime soon. It’s on pace to pass Facebook in total daily minutes in 2025, according to a 2023 analysis from Insider Intelligence and eMarketer.

Deep pockets: Media and entertainment providers spent more than $1 billion on TikTok in 2023, accounting for almost 30% of total ad spend last year, the MediaRadar report found. Retailers spent more than $500 million, while technology advertisers (including electronics, software, and telecom companies) spent $314 million.

“TikTok’s massive growth in the last few years provides a key outlet to reach the highly engaged, often young audiences as they are scrolling through their feeds,” Todd Krizelman, MediaRadar’s co-founder and CEO, said in a press release.

SilentTok: In February, Universal Music Group, which represents major musicians including Taylor Swift and Drake, started pulling its songs from TikTok after the two companies failed to come to a new contract agreement, and some observers are anticipating “a downstream effect” from the decision, Marketing Brew previously reported.

“It will be interesting to see how the unresolved fallout with UMG affects advertising on the platform and if the music restriction drives away users who are no longer able to access their favorite artists,” Krizelman said.