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TikTok Rolls Out New Interactive Add-Ons & In-stream Shopping

In an attempt to drive engagement, TikTok is launching interactive features to let users spend more on the app

TikTok

TikTok’s constantly making efforts and adding ways to help brands to engage more consumers, drive engagement, and make consumers spend more on the platform by rolling out new features. This time it has come up with brand new Interactive Add-Ons for brand promotions and a ‘Project Shopping’ to break into online shopping.

The platform was named among the ‘TIME 100 Most Influential Companies of 2023’:

Interactive Add-Ons with Your Promotions

The platform rolled out its new Interactive Add-Ons for promotions, these add-ons come in Standard and Premium categories, which are essentially stickers, pop-ups, and other visual markers that invite users to engage with ads.

These new Interactive Add-Ons will provide new ways to trigger direct responses from the app users, they will be allured to interact with the promotion in some form and the platform will have user engagement rates go up.

According to TikTok, “Interactive Add-ons offer a unique way to entice engaged viewers with popups, stickers, and other visual elements. Viewers who have shared, liked, or commented on a TikTok brand video are 150% more likely to buy a product or service. Catching the eye of active consumers is made easier with these new creative enhancements.”

New Interactive Add-Ons will come in two forms as we discussed earlier:

Standard add-on elements:

  • Display Card – which highlights key brand messages/offers
  • Gift Code Sticker – which offers incentives for engagement
  • Voting Sticker – so you can run a poll, quiz, or feedback form in your ad
  • Countdown Sticker – to highlight an upcoming event

Premium add-on elements:

  • Pop-out Showcase – which enables you to highlight your product and drive direct action
  • Gesture – which enables you to invite participation, with the action the viewer takes then revealing more product insight
  • Super Like 2.0 – which adds ’eye-catching floating icons that appear when users engage with your ad’, and includes a pop-up card after the Super Like effect appears

These new interactive Add-ons could prove to be handy, and help in driving more engagement with TikTok ads and getting users to stop mid-scroll to pay attention to the promotions.

TikTok’s New In-stream Shopping

Looks like the platform is determined to make in-app shopping big, and test its capacity to drive trends. In response to a mediocre response from Western audiences, TikTok seems to capitalize on its massive popularity among youth and drive an in-app shopping trend as it moves forward and launches an in-stream Shopping product showcase called ‘Trendy Beat’.

Inarguably, TikTok has the power to drive trends and has done it in the past, the platform can use that insight to make a power move and drive its next eCommerce push with an in-app product showcase ‘Trendy Beat’, displaying products made by TikTok itself.

According to TikTok, “In recent weeks, UK users have begun to see a new shopping feature within the TikTok app called ‘Trendy Beat’, a section offering items that have proven popular on videos, such as tools to extract ear wax or brush off pet hair from clothing. All the items advertised are shipped from China, sold by a company registered in Singapore that’s owned by TikTok’s Beijing-based parent company ByteDance, according to filings and people familiar with the operations.”

The move helps the platform to inject itself into the consumer supply chain, with a vision to compete with fast fashion trends across the globe. These eCommerce efforts would be a new approach, The platform will build its own product and sales pipeline, contradictory to the traditional approach where they used to rely on third-party sellers to create their own TikTok shop.

TikTok stands to gain several advantages from its capacity to swiftly leverage trending products and generate direct profits from sales. Additionally, this capability could serve as a habitual trigger.

By effectively promoting and selling popular items within the app, TikTok would have more successful instances to showcase to brand partners, thereby bolstering its case for the potential of in-app selling and convincing them of the associated opportunities.

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