TikTok Surpasses YouTube with 3.7 Trillion KRW Consumer Spending Last Year

[Asia Economy Reporter Yuri Choi] ‘TikTok’ was recognized as the strongest app in the mobile market last year.

On the 31st, data and analytics platform data.ai announced in its ‘2023 Mobile Market Status’ report that TikTok's cumulative consumer spending exceeded $6 billion (approximately 7.4 trillion KRW). In 2022 alone, it achieved $3 billion (3.7 trillion KRW) in consumer spending, ranking first among major entertainment genre apps.

Looking at the cumulative consumer spending of major apps in the ‘Entertainment’ genre over the past 10 years, TikTok showed explosive growth between Q4 2021 and Q4 2022. Especially from Q2 last year, it surpassed major entertainment apps such as YouTube and Netflix to become number one in consumer spending.

In terms of downloads, as of Q4 last year, TikTok's cumulative downloads exceeded 3.5 billion. It widened the gap to more than twice that of YouTube, which ranked second among major apps.

The explosive growth of TikTok is analyzed to be due to its live streaming, content creation, and broad sharing features through hashtags, which best resonate with Generation Z trends.

David Kim, Head of Asia-Pacific at data.ai, said, “In the with-COVID era, entertainment and social apps are showing strong growth momentum by following various differentiated strategies and trends. Entertainment and social apps, deeply embedded in mobile users’ daily lives, must prepare to be more scalable and flexibly adapt to changes in the times through communication with users.”