Australians spend more time on TikTok than on YouTube [report]

Australian consumers are now spending more time on TikTok than competitor YouTube, according to a new report.

In Australia, YouTube has a comfortable lead in the number of users – 16 million a month – while TikTok clocked up nearly 2.5 million in an average four weeks in the first half of 2020.

But a new report shows that the Bytedance-owned platform is generating more engagement.

App tracking company App Annie’s State of Mobile 2021 reported that TikTok’s Australian monthly usage jumped to an average of 16.8 hours from 7.9 hours in 2019.

YouTube engagement was 16.3 monthly hours, up from 14.9 hours.

According to the report, this love affair by TikTok users is not confined to Australia.

“TikTok ranked in the top five by time spent and its average monthly time spent per user grew faster than nearly every other app analyzed, including 70% in the US and 80% in the UK — surpassing Facebook,” App Annie said.

Diving deeper it went on to reveal that in the US, it’s 24.5 hours a month for TikTok versus 22 hours on YouTube.

The Brits were TikToking 26 hours a month in May and just 16 per month on YouTube.

App Annie additionally noted: “TikTok is on track to hit 1.2 billion active users in 2021.”

It remains to be seen if that growth will be sped up after the app announced this month it was extending is maximum video length to three minutes from 60 seconds.

In terms of app download rankings, Tik Tok was at #2 in Australia, surpassed only by ZOOM Cloud Meetings.

It beat Disney+ at #3, Facebook Messenger at #4, Instagram at #5, Netflix at #6, Spotify at #7 and Facebook at #8.

In terms of discovering new apps, 67% globally make a decision from online research and 37% from a friend or family member.

It’s not just Australia’s Gen Z that is devoted to mobile apps. While its total time on the Top 50 apps grew by 8% year on year, Millennials’ use was up 9% while Baby Boomers went up 6%.

According to an October 2020 profile of an Australian TikTok user, 60% (or 1.5 million) of them are females, with 70% from Generation Alpha & Generation Z.