TikTok is a private company, so it doesn’t have to reveal too many details about topics like how many advertisers are on the platform. But at a talk on Monday in Cannes, Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, said hundreds of thousands of small- and medium-sized businesses buy ads there. “We want millions," Chandlee said.
Millions of advertisers are typically the goal for major media platforms, especially since Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, boasts more than 10 million advertisers. TikTok executives were at Cannes, opening the first day of the advertising festival, at its festival headquarters in a discrete event space across from the Palais, the main center of action for the conference.
TikTok’s team discussed the tools that the platform is putting in place, such as live shopping; the challenges of building brand safety technology; the effects of Apple’s privacy rules on the whole ad ecosystem; and the creator economy. Ray Cao, TikTok’s managing director and global head of monetization product, strategy and operation, also talked about the challenges of losing his luggage upon arriving in Nice, France.