YouTube, as the dominant player in the CTV market, has already occupied an important position in the living room scene, and TikTok’s entry will undoubtedly trigger a reshuffle of the industry landscape. This article will speculate from four dimensions: Will TikTok seize market share through a low-price strategy? How will it compete with YouTube in the pre-installed market? Will you buy copyright at a high price? And how can you supplement third-party measurement data to gain the trust of advertisers?
In late June, according to TheInformation, TikTok is developing a special version of Smart TV, with the goal of launching it on mainstream systems such as Samsung, Roku, and Fire TV as soon as possible.
At the Cannes International Festival of Creativity, which ended just a few days ago, David Kaufman, head of global product at TikTok, bluntly said: The living room is the next budget front. TikTok is transforming from a social platform to an all-video platform, and the TV layout is one of the investment directions to support this transformation.
All signs point to TikTok entering the hinterland of YouTube.
According to eMarketer data, in 2024, 150 million people in the United States will be scrolling through YouTube on the big screen in their living rooms. YouTube has swallowed nearly a quarter of its CTV advertising budget in the United States, making it the absolute leader in the market.
According to data from marketing company Tinuiti, the marketing budget invested by US advertisers on YouTube CTV (43%) surpassed that of mobile (42%) for the first time. Just a year ago, these two numbers were 24% vs. 51%, and the volume of mobile phones was almost twice that of CTV.
For many advertisers, this is already a very clear budget watershed – advertising spend is flowing from mobile and traditional linear TV to CTV connected TV on a large scale and continuously.
This time, TikTok is entering the CTV space, and it is clear that it is increasingly greedy for the fat of CTV advertising.
How will TikTok cut into the big screen scene in the living room? I boldly made a few conjectures.
Guess 1: Launch a price war
The TikTokTV version will most likely use a low price to grab the market first, and then raise the price depending on the effect.
What does a product manager need to do?
In the process of a product from scratch, it is not easy to do a good job in the role of product manager, in addition to the well-known writing requirements, writing requirements, writing requirements, there are many things to do. The product manager is not what you think, but will only ask you for trouble, make a request:
View details >
This is a natural decision. TikTok wants to play a low-priced card in the living room scene, relying on two major prerequisites:
First, the CTV advertising plate is still enlarged, and the overall brand budget is flowing upwards. Such a low-price and volume method can bring positive revenue.
Second, the seats between hardware and platforms are not completely locked by YouTube, Roku, and Amazon, and there are many competitors and obvious price bands.
As long as these two conditions exist at the same time, low price entry, effect running, and subsequent price increase are a path that can run through.
On the demand side, CTV advertising spending still maintains a double-digit growth rate – eMarketer estimates that CTV placements in the United States will increase by another 16.8% to $33.48 billion in 2025, and 56% of brands plan to continue to increase their budgets, and it is expected that $50-6 billion in advertising spending will flow to CTV big screens every year.
The benefits of CTV for advertisers are intuitive:
First of all, most smart TVs are bound to the home address and fixed device ID, and the platform can accurately know which household the advertisement is delivered to. secondly, the QR code or “buy now” button on the screen allows viewers to place an order with a scan of their mobile phone on the sofa, which is one step less than mobile advertising; In addition, the TV’s built-in automatic content recognition system will record the time, channel and number of views of each advertisement, and the brand can quickly see how many new households have been reached, how many times it has been viewed on average, and correspond these exposure data to subsequent e-commerce orders one by one.
The market continues to grow, which gives TikTok room to leverage its budget with price.
From the supply side, the average CPM of traditional long-form video or sports streaming (Netflix, Max) is still above $30. According to data analysis by data company GuptaMedia, YouTubeTV’s regular CPM is $20–$25 and can be as high as $30–$40, depending on factors such as ad type, targeting, and delivery method (direct vs. programmatic).
According to an AdRoll report, TikTok’s overall CPM has been on a downward trend since the beginning of 2024.
If the same advertising fee can get more exposure on TikTokTV for brands, why not do it?
Therefore, TikTok is likely to continue to keep CTV’s advertising pricing in the $20 range. For TikTok, cost-effectiveness is the fastest “entry voucher”, which quickly realizes the initial penetration of “price for volume”.
Guess 2: Enter the pre-installed market in the way of sharing
In terms of pre-installed layout, TikTok faces opponents such as Netflix and YouTube, which have taken different pre-installed cooperation models.
Netflix’s approach is very straightforward, which is a cash buyout. As early as 2011, it negotiated a “red button” agreement with Samsung, LG, and Sony: adding a striking red shortcut key to Netflix on the TV remote control (usually printed with the word “Netflix”), and at the same time reserving a fixed entrance on the first screen of the system homepage.
According to a Bloomberg report, Roku will charge Netflix and other streaming services a “button fee” of $1 per unit, which can bring Roku “millions of dollars” in fixed income in just one month.
Netflix also launched the “Netflix Recommended TV” certification in 2015. As long as the TV is pre-installed with Netflix when it is shipped, you can see its icon on the first screen of the homepage after turning it on, and then attach an exclusive red button to the remote control, and control the cold start time of the app within two seconds, you can get this certification and print it on the packaging box and store booth.
For manufacturers, this is just a few more software specifications, but consumers can identify the “smooth Netflix” model at a glance in the store, so this button has slowly become a plus for sales, and it can be regarded as a cost-effective deal.
Unlike Netflix, YouTube relies on deeper ecological contracts.
To obtain Google services such as PlayStore, OEM TV manufacturers must sign the GTVS/MADA agreement and pre-install a full set of Google apps, including YouTube and YouTubeTV. In May this year, the settlement document in India’s antitrust case made it clear that this pre-installation requirement was a hard clause in the agreement.
TikTok’s pre-installed strategy does not have the obvious advantages of both: it does not have the premium exclusive video content of Netflix or the ecological advantages of Google.
Considering that its business model relies on advertising, ad splitting is more suitable for entering the pre-installed market:
TikTok can reach revenue-sharing agreements with OEMs on the homepage or remote control shortcuts, allowing OEMs to continue to get a share of the ads instead of a one-time subsidy. This mechanism can effectively reduce the decision-making cost of OEMs and continue to motivate them to prioritize the layout of TikTok entrances.
This partnership model is similar to the Peacock agreement reached between NBCUniversal and Roku.
In 2020, NBCU’s streaming service Peacock was preparing to cooperate with TV manufacturer Roku, which required partners to hand over 30% of their advertising inventory to the platform to sell on its own; Peacock is only willing to give half and insists on using NBCU’s self-built advertising platform instead of connecting to Roku’s OneViewDSP. After a period of stalemate between the two sides, the two companies simultaneously officially announced that they had “reached a long-term distribution and advertising technology cooperation”.
Although the statement did not give an exact ratio, a number of mainstream technology media confirmed that Peacock accepted to connect the 15% of its ad inventory to Roku’s OneView DSP for unified sale in exchange for platform-level entrances and video wall recommendation slots, while NBCU kept the remaining 85% of the ad slots and all user data.
This case proves that under the advertising sharing mechanism, OEMs are more willing to provide homepage recommendations and entry points, but the key is whether the core business interests of the platform can still be guaranteed after the account is split.
But TikTok still encounters many challenges. For example, CTV’s audience habits are still biased towards long videos, and it is still inconclusive how short videos maintain strong stickiness in the sofa scene. In addition, TikTok’s ad sharing plan needs to reach a clear and reliable mechanism with the participation of multiple OEMs, and any dispute over terms may end the negotiation early.
However, competition in the pre-installed market is being restructured, which gives TikTok more bargaining chips.
At the beginning of this year, India ruled in an antitrust review of Google that OEMs can purchase PlayStore separately without forcibly bundling Google’s “family bucket”, which means that if other markets follow suit in the future, YouTube’s pre-installed advantage may be loosened.
On the device side, Roku has 38% market share and FireTV 18%, plus Samsung and LG’s respective systems, and there is no shortage of negotiable entrances for the channel. If the advertising sharing incentive can be strengthened, TikTok only needs to reach a first-of-the-fold or shortcut cooperation with some OEMs to quickly expand the basic installed capacity, further amplifying the leverage effect of the “low-price absorption” strategy.
Guess 3: In the short term, it will not buy copyright at a high price, but in a light way of copyright
Refer to YouTube’s content strategy: it pulls high-ARPU categories (sports, podcasts, movies) into TV content, replicates the subscription + high-CPM model, and competes for the platform budget that originally belonged to linear TV and streaming. For this reason, YouTube has bought a lot of IP rights.
Will TikTok participate in the IP copyright war in the future?
I speculate that not in the short term, and probably in the long term.
In the short term, TikTok is more likely to rely on the path of “lightweight licensing + short video monetization” to enter the large-screen market:
It has already started to do such collaborations. At present, TikTok has the copyright to the 2025 Club World Cup, and it will become the official short video hub during the event, launching content integration pages such as event highlights and behind-the-scenes footage. At the same time, it has cooperated with Major League Soccer MLS to renew its content until 2028 and has become a long-term short video strategy platform for MLS.
These are not buying out the entire live broadcast, but through social communication to give full play to the advantages of the platform’s short videos, and share advertising and e-commerce revenue with copyright owners – this “light copyright + joint venture” model is efficient and fast, and this style is “very TikTok”.
In terms of film and television content, TikTok may also follow YouTubeMovies’ early strategy: allowing content providers to put the full version on the platform, and then TikTok supplements tools and editing functions to split long videos into short videos for creators to edit for secondary creation.
The advantage of this strategy is that it allows TikTok to comprehensively collect IP content to make a short video material library without burning money, and at the same time detect which types of clips can explode, and serve as a warm-up for heavier cooperation in the future.
For example, if it finds that the “hilarious clip of the protagonist” of an old series has a high amount of interaction on TV, it can experiment with the copyright owner to test the broadcast plan of the “TV series channel” or series without having to spend millions of dollars to buy the entire copyright.
Compared with Netflix or YouTube, TikTok’s gameplay is more flexible, content density is more fragmented, and it is more in line with its algorithm distribution advantages.
Unless it wants to fully enter the entertainment and sports copyright window, there is no need to bet big on IP in the short term. If the pace of cooperation and monetization is stable, I guess it will not rule out winning one or two medium-sized large IPs in the future, such as regional leagues or classic movie collections, to further supplement the medium and long content pool and increase CPM.
However, the whole path will still be “light first, then heavy, short and fast, and then steady and deep”.
Therefore, if you see TikTok running advertisements or signing content cooperation contracts in sports, film and television copyrights in the future, there is no need to be surprised, this is a natural continuation of its short video logic on the big screen.
4. Supplement third-party measurement
To achieve long-term growth, low advertising prices alone are not enough. Advertisers need to be clear about the performance and return of their ads before investing more budget. This requires TikTok to provide transparent and credible third-party measurement data
Attribution difficulties, data fragmentation, and privacy restrictions make it difficult for brands to see the actual return on TikTokTV’s investment. Many brands are stuck in the dilemma of “seeing traffic but not seeing value”.
To solve this problem, TikTok’s next strategy has been revealed. I guess it will unfold in two phases:
First, it will enhance cross-screen deduplication and exposure aggregation capabilities. TikTok has announced an in-depth partnership with NielsenONE, allowing advertisers to see the unified delivery and deduplication coverage of TikTok, CTV, and linear TV in a cross-media report.
This ability to truly “put all versions of data together” is the most lacking source of confidence in traditional media budget allocation.
At the same time, it will also extend the measurement accuracy downwards, and iSpot, an advertising technology company focusing on TV advertising data analysis, has opened a unified measurement solution for TikTok Campaign, and preliminary data shows that 58% of TikTok ads are not reached by linear TV, which means that the real increase is very high.
If these tools can be produced regularly and endorsed by multiple institutions, TikTok will achieve its goal of “grabbing budgets with verification data”. If an advertiser can compare the increment, frequency and conversion contribution of TikTok and YouTube CTV in Nielsen & iSpot reports, it will be easier to accept the marketing value of TikTokTV, which will also leave enough room for TikTokTV to raise prices in the future.
All in all, the next step of TikTokTV on the big screen is to “talk” with data. When the previously invisible delivery value is quantified and comparable, TikTok can upgrade from “mobile” to “CTV”, completing the transition from low-price attraction to high-price retention.
The above are a few of my speculations: In a word, enter at a low price, further increase the value, and finally raise the platform premium.
This “three-step” approach makes TikTok’s business logic clear: enter the game with cheaper CPM in the market, win brand trust with verifiable data and effects, and then gradually raise prices to achieve profitability.
Its challenge is to maintain the independent credibility of the measurement system and ensure that the initial low-price strategy does not become a long-term discount label. If executed correctly, TikTokTV will be YouTube’s biggest competitor in the future. (Author: Swordsman doc)
