ByteDance to Generate $27 Billion in Ad Revenue by 2021
The company, which is under an executive order to divest control of TikTok this week, is on track to meet its revenue goal for 2020.
ByteDance, the Beijing-headquartered owner of TikTok, is set to meet its advertising revenue goal for the year, which will place it firmly as the second-largest giant in China’s digital advertising market.
According to Reuters, the tech company is on track to make at least 180 billion yuan (or $27.2 billion) in annual advertising revenue, making up the bulk of its $30 billion revenue goal for 2020. In terms of ad revenue, it is beaten only by Alibaba.
Though TikTok is ByteDance’s flagship product internationally, the social media app contributes little to its parent company’s overall cashflow. Of ByteDance’s ad revenue, nearly 60% comes from Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok. A further 20% comes from ByteDance’s news aggregator Jinri Toutiao, and less than 3% from its long-form video platform Xigua.
These final numbers will be adjusted by the end of the year, as many of the company’s most important campaigns – including year-end sales – have not yet been officially launched.
ByteDance continues to struggle with an order from the Trump administration ordering it to divest its US operations of TikTok by this Thursday. While a deal between ByteDance and Oracle appears to have been settled, the company lodged a petition with a US Appeals Court late on Tuesday challenging the administration’s order and seeking an extension to the deadline.
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Outside of TikTok, ByteDance is looking to other avenues of growth, with plans to invest 10 billion on its Xigua platform next year. The company intends to increase Xigua’s count of daily active users to over 100 million, while its Douin eCommerce platform is expected to reach roughly 150 billion in gross merchandise value by the year’s end.