This report summarizes our forecasts for nine countries—the US, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, China, India, Japan, and South Korea—and offers comparative analyses of the major time spent numbers for each.

When social buying in China will boom

Last year, China was the only market to see overall ad spending growth, although digital ad spending performed well almost everywhere. This year, every country will see growth in almost every category.

It’s not surprising news, given the app’s strong track record of ecommerce experiments—and the fact that its Chinese counterpart Douyin has had in-app shopping features for years now. If the feature rolls out more widely, it would reshape the app in a few ways:. Social commerce could become a lot more central on TikTok than on Facebook and Instagram.

Whereas in China, they went from not even having the internet to suddenly everyone has a smartphone in their pockets.”. Through rapid infrastructural development and subsequent smartphone adoption, many rural communities in China have come online in recent years.

One step up from in-app purchases has emerged from China in the form of real-time purchases from livestreamed video; microblogging and livestreaming apps are highly popular in the country.

Livestreaming commerce—which has exploded in China and is an area of intense interest. Amazon Live is the ecommerce giant’s version of QVC or HSN, a feature it has heavily promoted during recent Prime Day events. NBCUniversal’s shoppable TV ads, which debuted during the 2019 French Open with Lacoste as the pilot sponsor. The media conglomerate also added a direct checkout feature in April 2020.