What's Hot in Small Business – Chris Crum
Chris Crum writes for Small Business Resources about what's new for small business. Chris was a featured writer with the iEntry Network of B2B Publications where hundreds of publications linked to his articles including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, LA Times and the New York Times.

TikTok Adds Designated Market Area Geo-Targeting for Businesses

TikTok Adds Designated Market Area Geo-Targeting for Businesses

Image via TikTok

TikTok, the increasingly popular video-based social media service, recently announced the addition of Designated Market Area (DMA) geo-targeting support for businesses that use the platform for advertising and marketing.

DMA regions are areas in the U.S. where local TV viewing is measured by Nielsen. Each region is made up of a group of counties. There are 210 in all throughout the United States. Nielsen cites the following as key benefits of DMA geo-targeting: 1

  1. Target local advertising and direct marketing campaigns across multiple media
  2. Sell advertising by local television market
  3. Select local research samples
  4. Segment and analyze internal and third-party data by local television market

"DMA geo-targeting provides businesses who want to reach customers and users in the United States with more granular location targeting options, tapping into more opportunities across enterprise, mid-market, and SMB businesses," TikTok said in a blog post announcing DMA support. 2 "DMA geo-targeting uses standardized geographic areas so businesses can share more relevant, interesting and impactful content with their customers in geo-targeted areas, saving them time and resources."

TikTok says the businesses it sees having the most success are those that "embrace the creativity and authenticity" of their community on the platform. The DMA geo-targeting will allow them to add a localized element to such authenticity and reach people who are more likely to be their customers.

Last year, TikTok had about 65.9 million users in the U.S., according to Statista, which projects a 22 percent year-over-year increase, with TikTok reaching 73.7 million users this year and 88.7 million by 2024.3 As the firm notes, it is one of the fastest growing social media apps in the U.S., particularly among younger demographics.

Image via Statista

As the audience grows, businesses will have more to gain from DMA geo-targeting as regions themselves are likely to grow in users.

The new capabilities are just the latest in the series of new features aimed at businesses. Earlier this year, TikTok launched the TikTok Video Editor, giving small businesses a way to easily create native video ads from a web browser. Advertisers get access to a suite of editing features that make videos feel like they are native to TikTok, and allow for the inclusion of popular music, different fonts and colors, custom subtitles, etc.

Image via TikTok

In early June, TikTok made headlines as it updated its privacy so that it has the ability to collect users’ biometric data, including "faceprints" and voiceprints". This would be digital scans of users’ faces and voices. It is not clear whether this will have any impact on business use of the platform.


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