- TikTok is reportedly trying to nab some of Facebook’s advertisers through targeted marketing campaigns, Adweek reported.
- TikTok, a short-form video app with more than 1 billion downloads, has been a problem for Facebook this year, and it recently moved near Facebook’s office and started poaching employees.
- In leaked audio from a Facebook meeting over the summer, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said that the company plans to compete with TikTok. Facebook’s subsidiary, Instagram, is now launching a new feature that mimics TikTok.
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TikTok is running a campaign to snatch potential Facebook advertisers, according to a new report from Shoshana Wodinsky at Adweek.
Adweek found that TikTok had at least five campaigns specifically targeting Facebook advertisers that used search terms including “Facebook influencer ads” and “Facebook ad network.”
TikTok and Facebook did not immediately respond to Business Insider’s request for comment.
This is just the latest in the fight for advertisers and users between Facebook and TikTok. TikTok is popular with Gen Z, and has amassed over a billion downloads, making it the top free non-gaming app in the US. In leaked audio from a summer all-hands Facebook meeting published by The Verge in October, CEO Mark Zuckerberg described the company’s plans to compete with TikTok. “So yeah. I mean, TikTok is doing well … we’re trying to first see if we can get it to work in countries where TikTok is not already big before we go and compete with TikTok in countries where they are big.”
New reports from Buzzfeed News show that Facebook spent six months in 2016 trying to buy Musical.ly, which eventually became TikTok after it was bought by Chinese tech giant ByteDance. Then, in November 2018, Facebook launched Lasso, which was nearly identical to TikTok, although it didn't reach mainstream use. Facebook's subsidiary, Instagram, is now launching a new video feature called Reels that's nearly a copycat of TikTok.
In October, TikTok opened an office in Mountain View, California, just a few minutes away from Facebook's headquarters in Palo Alto. TikTok's new office used to be home to Facebook's messaging app WhatsApp. Since 2018, it has also hired two-dozen former Facebook employees, reportedly offering higher salaries to draw talent away from its competitor.
Since then, Zuckerberg has drawn on fears of China to paint TikTok as dangerous. In a speech at Georgetown University, Zuckerberg slammed TikTok over allegations that the app has removed content that could offend the Chinese government and censored users who are critical of China - TikTok has denied any accusations of censorship.