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We Are Social: Tiktok on the way up in UK download stakes

TikTok is now one of the UK’s most downloaded apps, according to Digital 2020: The United Kingdom, a report released today by social creative agency We Are Social and social media management company Hootsuite.

The short-form video platform, which didn’t feature in last year’s most downloaded list, follows three Facebook-owned apps – WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Instagram – and Netflix to become the UK’s fifth most downloaded app in 2019.

But with just eight per cent of UK internet users aged 16 to 64 reportedly using TikTok in the last month, it still has lower usage among UK audiences than Tumblr (11 per cent), Twitch (12 per cent), Reddit (16 per cent), Skype (21 per cent) and Snapchat (25 per cent).

According to the report the UK now has 45 million social media users (up 2.9 per cent on last year with 1.3m new users). UK Social media adspend in 2019 is up 20 per cent year-on-year to £3.38 billion against £2.6bn the year before.

Among the other findings are Reddit’s climb from 8th to 4th in Alexa’s top UK websites and more British people play games on smartphones (45 per cent of internet users aged 16 to 64) than game consoles (33 per cent).

We Are Social UK CEO Jim Coleman says: “There’s always a tendency for marketers to be blinded by a shiny new object. TikTok is a very exciting platform that’s clearly growing in popularity, and we should be considering and keeping a very close eye on it. But ultimately, the creative process works best when we come at it with a people-first approach – a problem to solve, not a platform to execute on.”

The full report is available here.

One Comment

  1. Some interesting stuff here. It is also worth looking at latest UKOM (Industry standard) data on UK usage of smartphone apps – TikTok doesn’t make top20 Apps for monthly reach for in the UK, BUT it is just outside the top 10 for timespent if you include musical.ly. Latest Digital Market Overview available in Data&Insight on ukom.uk.net and more in OnTheRoad section

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