The Younger, the TikToker: Investigating Social Media Ad Platforms for Young American and Chinese Users

Abstract

With video-based social media platforms such as TikTok and Douyin gaining increasing popularity among young people, it is imperative for advertisers and social media practitioners to understand the role of these platforms before placing an advertisement. This experimental study examined four social media platforms (TikTok and Facebook for American users, and Douyin and WeChat for Chinese users) to analyze how young social media users perceive advertisements on each platform. The findings showed that social media users in the US are more critical of video advertisements on TikTok than on Facebook. In addition, the study found that American users are more generous than their Chinese counterparts while rating the personalities featured in advertised brands.

Keywords:

• TikTok
• Douyin
• social media advertising
• brand personality
• brand youngness
• willingness to share
• purchase intention

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.