TikTok’s user base will increase substantially in 2020. Despite a ban on the app in India and efforts to restrict it in the US, TikTok will continue to expand in many countries in 2021.

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In our first forecast for TikTok usage in India—the short-form video app's largest overseas market—we estimate that its monthly user base grew 328.8% year over year to 79.0 million in 2019. We expect that figure to reach 124.9 million this year, up 58.1%.

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.

Snapchat will have 347.3 million users this year, up 16.1% year over year. Emerging markets, particularly India, will fuel these gains, while growth in core regions will be more modest.

The strong growth for both TikTok and Instagram in most regions is partially responsible for the downward trend. The number of Snapchat users in India will rise by 28.0% in 2020 to 18.5 million. That will make it Snap’s No. 2 market worldwide, after the US. Snapchat’s fastest-growing country in 2020 will be Austria, posting 30.1% user growth. That’s up from 3.3% in 2019.

Snapchat will see global user numbers rise by 16.1%, partly as a result of new features and partly as a consequence of TikTok’s troubles, especially in India, where TikTok is now banned. Growth is also coming from a much smaller base than Instagram’s.

Instagram will remain the world’s second-largest social network in 2019, with 788.4 million users. Growth will primarily come from emerging or developing economies, including Russia and India, but every country that we track will add new users in 2019.

The pandemic has played a major role in Instagram’s sizable growth in India, but so too has the country’s ban on TikTok (and dozens of other China-based apps). The ban went into effect on June 29, 2020, and we expect it will help boost Instagram user growth in the longer term as well, assuming that TikTok doesn’t make a comeback in India.

Traditional and digital channels are driving media consumption in parallel in India, unlike Western countries where time spent with traditional media is shrinking.

In the US and Europe, up-and-coming platforms include TikTok and esports platform Twitch. Pinterest is also on the radar for some. In China, Xiaohongshu (Little Red Book) and Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) are among those that offer new opportunities for marketers. TikTok: This fast-growing short-video app, formerly known as Musical.ly, is gaining favor with influencers.

There are already signs that Snap's Android-first approach may be working; it said the daily average number of users in India watching Discover content in Q3, for example, increased nearly 50% over Q2. (India is an Android-heavy market.). Of course, Snapchat has also benefitted greatly from India’s ban on TikTok.

eMarketer forecasting analyst Eric Haggstrom shares our estimates on people watching digital video in India and why we anticipate the country’s viewership will soon beat the US.