TikTok Shop is intentionally annoying

If you’ve opened TikTok recently, you’ve probably seen an ad for products sold in the new in-app TikTok Shop, which officially launched in the U.S. last September. In fact, you’ve probably seen the same TikTok Shop ad multiple times. You sighed and swiped away, but a few swipes later, it reappeared.

according to complaint Scattered Exceed internet about advertisepeople don’t like so many ads Disrupting the process Endless scrolling. In a series of unscientific tests I conducted with my TikTok account, I saw five to six ads for about every 20 videos. Not all of them were for store products — about half the time they were old-fashioned sponsored ads from big brands like Sephora or Amazon, which are known for their professional polish and lack of an orange shopping cart icon at the bottom directing users to a product page.

The complaints about TikTok Shop ads aren’t just about the number of ads (you’ll likely see a lot of them when scrolling through your Instagram Stories feed), but how often you’ll see the same ad. The products that the TikTok algorithm seems to be selecting for me are This collagen peptide powder — Specific via This ad Coming from a young-looking woman who claims to be almost 50. I see this ad so often that I feel like I’m trapped in a social media ad prison. Why are these TikTok ads suddenly stalking us all?

One thing is certain: TikTok is certainly keeping a close eye on how the frequency of Shop ads annoys users and affects traffic. TikTok declined to share with Vox the details of how Shop ads are served, including who sees which ads and how often they appear.

Rui Ma, a technology analyst at Tech Buzz China, said there are reports that Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) internally believes that 8% to 10% of the app experience can be business-related content before users start to leave. “This is allegedly based mainly on a combination of hard data and some management intuition,” she told Vox in an email.

Ma said: “I would be surprised if TikTok did not use this number as a starting reference, but it is possible that the Chinese have a higher tolerance for advertising and this number may be too high for Americans.”

Another thing that is certain is that social media is an advertising business. Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, has created $134.9 billion Last year, TikTok generated about $131.9 billion in revenue, of which $131.9 billion came from advertising. TikTok has been around for a while in the U.S. and has a smaller user base than Meta’s app, but its revenue was about $131.9 billion. $8.75 billion In addition to the commission the store gets from every sale, advertising revenue also increased 10% last year.

Crucially, if TikTok Shop does become popular in the United States, TikTok will have a wealth of consumer data collected directly from users.

All major social media companies serve targeted ads to users. Some of that data is collected by apps based on what you enter in your profile or your interactions and behavior on the apps. Until recently, it was easy for them to see what other websites you visited or apps you used, but when Apple started requiring all apps on iOS to ask users if they wanted to Opt In to the app to track. Most people Say NoThe company has made gains in effective ad targeting, which in turn means brands are buying fewer ads. Facebook said it lost about $10 billion in advertising revenue It’s the second year since Apple’s privacy features were introduced.

With a built-in e-commerce marketplace, TikTok can get first-party data on users’ shopping habits in-house without having to track them across the internet. “TikTok Shop is a huge advertising measurement tool,” said Garrett Johnson, a professor of marketing at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business.

TikTok’s advertising strategy isn’t exactly clever, but Juozas Kaziukėnas, founder of business intelligence firm Marketplace Pulse and an e-commerce expert, believes that’s exactly why TikTok Shop is successful. “I think platforms like Facebook and Instagram were never willing to flood their users’ feeds with shopping content just to launch the platform,” he said.

TikTok may be willing to do this because it’s already where people go to find trending products. Last February, before TikTok Shop launched, eMarketer conducted a survey that found that the top places for U.S. consumers to start searching for products online were Amazon and Walmart — but TikTok made Third Place.

The aggressiveness of TikTok Shop ads could be temporary as the company monitors churn or whether users are spending less time on the app. But it could also be that the data shows that, despite all the complaints, people are still as dependent on the app as ever.

Technology analyst Ma believes the duplication is not intentional and is “probably more of an inventory issue,” she said. If there aren’t enough Shop advertisers at the moment, this could affect how often you see the same ad, or it could make duplication more likely if the target audience is smaller.

For TikTok, however, the overwhelming presence of ads may be particularly shocking because the app has long been lauded for its magical For You page, whose feed feels tailored to each user’s interests and quirks. While Facebook is stereotyped as where baby boomer parents post content, Instagram is where you browse friends’ vacation photos, and X (formerly Twitter) is where news and wild discussions come in, TikTok fans often express a sense of pride in carefully curating their For You feed to surface new, interesting content. TikTok Shop ads Destroy this fantasy.

“I think some people call it change “The decline of social platforms,” Kaziuknas said, referring to a term coined by journalist Cory Doctorow to describe the trend of online platforms becoming less quality over time.

The frequency and staying power of TikTok Shop ads points to a truth common to nearly all social media platforms as they mature: The apps are increasingly just a place to stumble upon shopping.

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