TikTok, the Chinese short-video app, is taking off in the US, India and elsewhere. It offers many unique marketing opportunities, such as the Hashtag Challenge, but marketers should take note of some risks.

Mobile dethroned TV in 2019 as the channel where US adults spent the most time. While it may be a symbolic threshold for now, it’s still notable that the average US adult spent 3 hours, 43 minutes (3:43) on their mobile devices in 2019, compared with the average 3:35 spent watching TV. As recently as 2016, US adults watched nearly an hour more of TV than they spent on their smartphones and tablets (4:05 vs. 3:08).

In 2019, 94.5% of internet users in China will be social network users. That amounts to just 59.0% of the country’s population. This report covers the trends shaping the market, as well as our first-ever user forecast for the popular short-video platform Douyin and updated estimates for WeChat and Sina Weibo.

Programmatic advertising will account for 71.0% of the digital display ad market in China this year. Mobile programmatic growth, as well as gains in private marketplaces and programmatic direct play a role. This report features our latest programmatic display forecast for China and explores these and other factors shaping the market through 2021.

Consumers in China, whether buying at retail outlets or street stalls, are using proximity mobile payments—largely supported by QR codes—and reducing their dependency on cash.

Douyin, TikTok’s equivalent in China, will grow 27.8% to 442.58 million users this year, which means that more than half of China’s internet users will use the short-form video app, according to eMarketer’s new estimates. Growth will slow to 7.3% in 2020 and continue to drop in the next few years.

Short-form video apps arrived in China in early 2017 and have established themselves as viable entertainment options, allowing users to create content in 15- and 60-second spurts. In fact, we estimate that average daily time spent with short-form video among mobile internet users has risen from 9.9% of total mobile internet time in Q3 2018 to 13.5% in Q2 2019. Meanwhile, time spent on over-the-top (OTT) apps experienced a slight decline.

China has proven to be a hotbed for digital innovations, especially in the past few years. During this time, marketers worldwide have observed the latest trends coming out of the country, applying what they learn to their own markets.

eMarketer senior forecasting analyst Oscar Orozco breaks down our adoption estimates for Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, and reasons behind its popularity.