If expanding into search, live streaming, and e-commerce wasn’t enough, TikTok has now added out-of-home advertising to that list.
They recently announced Out of Phone; a new advertising formula that enables brands to translate the content created and viewed in-app, and displaying that across surfaces in the physical world.
But what is the opportunity for brands, and should you be considering an OOH (Out-Of-Home) strategy with TikTok?
Let’s find out.
Contents
What is the TikTok Out of Phone Solution?
What does TikTok Out of Phone mean for brands?
OOH and influencer marketing can help brands reach new audiences, outside of Gen Z
How TikTok partners have already used Out of Phone
Can (& should) your brand utilize Out of Phone?
Hear from experts at The Goat Agency
Widening the opportunity TikTok offers for brands
What is the TikTok Out of Phone Solution?
TikTok has long been at the forefront of innovations within the social media space. The app expanded upon Vine’s formula for bitesize video content, ushering in a new wave of vertical swipe video and keeping users constantly engaged with content tailored to their preferences. Since then, the app has continued to innovate within the realms of AR, live content, and much more!
Now, TikTok is reaching beyond the dimensions of your mobile phone screen. In a recent article posted to TikTok Newsroom, fans, brands, and creators were introduced to Out of Phone, a new out-of-home solution enabling partners and brands to leverage TikTok content beyond the platform.
So, for the first time, TikTok is looking to bring its content into the real world across billboards, kiosks, cinemas, bars, restaurants, transportation systems, the earth, heavens, and sky, too. Although the aim is to launch Out of Phone solutions everywhere, TikTok will look to push this offering heavily across billboard and cinema advertising spots.
Out of Phone: Billboard
Brands can now display their TikTok content across physical OOH advertising using Out of Phone: Billboard. The formula works by taking existing campaigns and amplifying them onto billboards across major cities and all over the world, giving brands a new meaning of targeting traffic.
Brands that have existing TikTok marketing campaigns, leveraging influencer content to boost their reach and engagement, can now tap into real-life footfall. Out of Phone: Billboard will allow brands to leverage creator content to reach new, and potentially untapped, audiences.
Out of Phone: Cinema
Love them or hate them, trailers at the cinema are an integral part of the big screen experience. Now, alongside the biggest upcoming movies, you’ll also see TikTok content.
Out of Phone intends to provide more brands with an opportunity to showcase their TikTok campaigns at a larger, and more intimate scale. These ads will replicate what viewers see in-app and translate that experience onto cinema screens, capturing ready-made audiences with a segment of top performing content that brands can pay to showcase.
Out of Phone: Other Screens
The rise of TikTok has been monumental, and the app has made an effort to conquer every discipline it has been involved in. For example, it’s the king of short-form content, a major player in social commerce, one of the first social platforms to integrate AR, and much more. It’s no surprise then that TikTok intends to eat into the OOH market share, too.
TikTok has already launched its offering across screens, wherever they’re available, from bars and restaurants to gas stations and airports. The possibilities are endless.
Discussing Out of Phone as a solution for brands, Global Head of Distribution Dan Page said “We are on on a mission to create endless ways for our community to experience the joy and creativity of TikTok,”
“We’re taking TikTok beyond the palm of our hands and into everyday life.”
What does TikTok Out of Phone mean for brands?
In essence, TikTok’s new solution enables brands to replay TikTok clips to new screens, beyond mobile and desktop mediums.
Well, what does this mean for brands? It could be a really exciting innovation. Since TikTok is now ubiquitous, omnipresent, and a big driver of culture, the draw of an OOH formula, combined with social/influencer content, should increase the exposure of brand promotions enormously.
Out of Phone would also enable brands to leverage influencer-led media in new capacities. In fact, influencer-led paid media is already experiencing a boom of sorts, and the data is there to back it up. Meta recently published their findings on mixing partnership ads (creator-led media) with BAU (business as usual) ads, which found a 53% higher click-through-rate than brand-led paid, and a 19% reduction in CPAs.
OOH and influencer marketing can help brands reach new audiences, outside of Gen Z
Influencers are vastly popular, there’s no doubting that. Their content is relatable, easy-to-digest, and is tailored to communities with a host of different preferences. But, does that translate over to the physical world?
A JCDecaux survey would suggest that it does. Insight shows that 84% of Gen Z pays attention to OOH, and 58% trust brand messages appearing on Out-of-Home. With TikTok being a heavily Gen Z infused platform, you would expect its Out of Phone offering to be a success. But, there’s more to life than Gen Z.
Our friends over at Wavemaker have discovered that Gen X accounts for 28% of TikTok users, representing one of the fastest growing demographics on the platform. Ranging between 43 and 58, Gen X, naturally, are accustomed to OOH advertising, with bus posters and billboards providing their main advertising fill for a large portion of their lives. So, as they become more familiar with TikTok content, and ads within the platform, TikTok Out of Phone emerges as a viable solution to capture the attention of this prodigious demographic. After all, there are approximately 65.2 million of them in the U.S. alone.
How TikTok partners have already used Out of Phone
L’Oreal skincare brand CeraVe was one of the first brands to expand its influencer marketing activity beyond the FYP.
The brand’s summer 2023 campaign, #CleanseLikeaDerm, saw a TikTok collaboration with the always adorable grandma_droniak. CeraVe took the content created in-app, and reflected it across Times Square, New York, demonstrating one of the first use cases of TikTok Out of Phone, and how influencer content can translate to everyday life, beyond the palm of our hand.
Can (& should) your brand utilize TikTok Out of Phone?
Whether your brand chooses to use TikTok’s new solution will depend entirely on what you want to achieve. However, from what we’ve heard from TikTok, and gathering from the success of CeraVe, TikTok Out of Phone looks to be another high impact innovation.
Out of Phone seeks to unleash a world of creative possibilities that will expand the TikTok experience into the wider physical world. From a brand perspective, this means you can translate your TikTok content, which is already resonating with audiences in-app, and display that across screens all over the world, tapping into new minds from all walks of life.
Where you Out of Phone might not be as effective, is if you’re looking to target a specific group of people, and of course you can’t bank on your target audience being in any one place at a specific time, in the physical world. On social, you can guarantee this, reaching the exact desired audience on social has never been easy with the likes of paid social suites and influencer marketing. So if a more refined approach is what you’re after, you might want to consider keeping things in-app.
What do some of our experts think?
The Goat Agency is built upon social natives. And, with over 8 years experience delivering successful TikTok marketing campaigns, it’s safe to say we’ve got expertise to call upon. We asked a few of our team members to share their own personal thoughts on this new feature:
Cam McIntyre, Senior Campaign Manager:
“I think this could create a strong omnichannel approach for brands so that your social content doesn’t feel isolated. Some brands fall into the trap of what they do OOH compared with TV, social, digital assets etc. all feel so segmented as they’re all built by different teams, but ultimately if you can create a really cohesive brand message across all of these – obviously not necessarily the exact same content, but similar narrative, faces, messaging – through different channels, it creates a better experience for the consumer.”
Caitlin Thompson, Account Manager:
“It could be a great opportunity for brands to exponentially increase their awareness and showcase the amazing content that they or influencers are creating, but in places where some of their audience are more likely to see it.”
Jamie Linford, Partnerships Lead:
“I think this is very exciting. Why we do what we do is because we find that often social or influencer-first content outperforms branded content due to it feeling more relatable and authentic. Anything that pushes human-first content in the OOO sphere is a great idea in my opinion.”
Chris Robinson, Paid Social Director:
“It’s really interesting in the sense that TikTok has obviously recognised that the content that’s produced on the platform is super engaging and interactive. The challenge for Out of Phone is sticking that on digital display and billboards – will it have the same impact? How will it be measured and tracked? There are still things to understand but it’s a very interesting development and I’m excited to see where this goes.”
Widening the opportunity TikTok offers for brands
TikTok has continued to innovate on all-fronts. The app has commandeered short-form content, expanded into the search market, ushered in AR, and so many more opportunities for brands to reach their audiences.
Out of Phone is a testament to TikTok’s desire to be more than just a social media app. While TikTok has found incredible success in the digital world, there remains a lot of untapped potential outside of that. Now, that gap is closing.
The potential of this out-of-home venture is enormous, too. Since TikTok specializes in so many distribution areas, from livestreaming to e-commerce, could we start to see live content broadcast across Piccadilly Circus, perhaps even shoppable content that passersby can click-through to purchase on demand.
In summary, the potential for brands to succeed and reach their audience on (and off) TikTok has just entered a new phase, and we’re excited to see how the formula evolves.
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Want to learn more about TikTok Out of Phone, and how your brand can translate digital content into real world ads? Get in touch with us today to find out how we can help you revolutionize your TikTok marketing.
