Report: Which platforms would benefit most from TikTok ban?
January 13, 2025
The January 19th deadline for TikTok to divest or be banned in the US is fast approaching. The loss of TikTok in the US would cause a ripple effect across the media, marketing, and commerce landscape. Meta and YouTube stand to gain the most, but there is a long list of other winners and losers, reports eMarketer.
“It remains business as normal for most TikTok advertisers, users, and creators,” said Jasmine Enberg, VP & Principal Analyst. “But as the ban deadline looms, most businesses are preparing contingency plans, with YouTube Shorts and Instagram Reels emerging as their top TikTok alternatives. Still, most advertisers, users, and creators won’t leave TikTok or drastically change their strategies until they are forced to.”
ADVERTISERS
Most advertisers wouldn’t reallocate all of their TikTok spend directly after a ban. Our latest forecast estimates that TikTok generated $12.34 billion in US ad revenues in 2024. Assuming TikTok could lose between 50 per cent and 70 per cent of ad revenues due to a ban, $6.17 billion to $8.64 billion of ad spending could need a new home.
“Meta-owned Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts are the most natural fits for displaced users, creators, and advertisers,” said Enberg. “Snapchat and other social platforms have also been ‘TikTokifying’ their services and stand to benefit. TikTok is the closest thing we have to an ‘everything app’ in the US, and advertisers would also spend their dollars on ecommerce, search and entertainment platforms.”
Our analysis estimates 22.4 per cent of reallocated US TikTok ad dollars could go to Instagram. If the ban is enforced on January 19th, Instagram could generate between $1.41 billion and $1.90 billion in additional ad revenues, per our analysis. Facebook could generate between $1.05 billion and $1.48 billion, bringing Meta’s total share of reallocated TikTok ad dollars to 39.5 per cent.
Snapchat would capture a large chunk of the 18.3 per cent of TikTok ad dollars reallocated to other social platforms, excluding YouTube. Amazon, Google, Netflix, and others would also be prime venues for advertisers to spend the 31.5 per cent of reallocated TikTok ad dollars that would go to non-social platforms and channels.
“TikTok both competes and collaborates with entertainment, search and ecommerce providers,” said Enberg. “Platforms like Netflix and [Prime Video] would likely gain usage and ad spending, but they would also lose an important marketing vehicle. Small or independent businesses, creators and artists who rely on TikTok for discovery and income would be hit even harder.”
USERS/TIME SPENT
If there is a ban, TikTok wouldn’t just vanish from users’ phones. Instead, US app stores and internet service providers would be prohibited from hosting or providing access to TikTok. The most likely outcome is that consumers would be unable to download or update the app, stopping user growth and gradually degrading the experience until it becomes unusable.
Most US TikTok users already use many other social platforms. But at 51 minutes per day in 2024, TikTok users spend significantly more time on TikTok than users spend on other social apps. That leaves close to an hour of their daily media time up for grabs.
Instagram would absorb a lot of TikTok usage. Nearly three-fourths of TikTok users in the US were also Instagram users in 2024, per our forecast. Instagram is also now a video-first platform, with users spending over 60 per cent of their daily Instagram time watching videos. But other social apps that have a large user overlap, like Facebook and Snapchat, also stand to gain.
“The ‘TikTokification’ of social media is here to stay, with or without TikTok,” said Enberg. “Every social platform is now a short video platform, and some, including Facebook, are testing TikTok-like feeds that combine short, live and long video. Even so, there’s no exact replacement for the unique combination of culture, media and technology that makes TikTok tick.”
YouTube Shorts will draw in users as well. At 177.2 million, Shorts’ US audience is already larger than that of TikTok, which had 112.4 million US users in 2024, per our estimates. But that’s largely due to its connection to long-form YouTube, and TikTok likely still leads in engagement. Still, YouTube’s continued efforts to make Shorts a stronger TikTok competitor, through updates like increased video lengths, will propel user and time spent growth in 2025 – especially if a TikTok ban goes into effect.