What's the news?
The House of Representatives passed a bill on Wednesday that would require the TikTok owner, Chinese-based, ByteDance to sell the social media platform or face a total ban in the United States. If they do not sell within 165 days then app stores including the Apple App store and Google Play would be legally barred from hosting TikTok or providing web hosting services to ByteDance-controlled applications. Many House legislators have argued that the app could allow the Chinese government to access user data and influence Americans.
Looking further afield to other markets, many have taken steps to ban from government or state devices over data privacy concerns.
Since the announcement of the potential US ban, Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has confirmed that Australia would not follow suit and ban the app.
“I think you’ve got to be pretty cautious. You’ve always got to have national security concerns front and centre, but you also need to acknowledge that for a whole lot of people, this provides a way of them communicating,” Mr Albanese said.
“We haven’t got advice at this stage to do that (ban TikTok). We don’t use TikTok on government phones, and that is an appropriate measure that we’re putting in place.”
What do pharma marketers need to know?
Outside the US, TikTok's future seems more certain. With governments acknowledging that the app is loved and used by many people. The US ban may see a sale pushed through to keep the app active in the market. If you're a marketer outside the US such as Australia or UK, there are a lot of opportunities for using the app in your communications and the risk of a ban is low. This news from the US isn't cause to shy away from or stop using TikTok elsewhere.
What's the news?Australia’s privacy watchdog
launched an inquiry into how TikTok harvests personal data and whether it is being done with proper consent being gathered. Concerns centered primarily around whether data is collected on TikTok's tracking pixel, a small piece of code added to an advertiser's website used for the purposes of optimising advertising campaigns or to collect user data for building audiences for remarketing purposes. Concerns are that the pixel has been collecting users’ data, including email addresses, mobile phone numbers and browsing histories without their knowledge or consent even if they don’t have a TikTok account. In response, a number of Australian
brands ceased use of the pixel.
What do pharma marketers need to know?This news only affects the TikTok tracking pixel on your website, so we recommend not using this pixel until the inquiry has been completed. This doesn't affect your ability to use TikTok for organic content or for running advertising campaigns. Not using the pixel will just mean you cannot build and retarget audiences based on their behaviour on your website. It also restricts your ability to optimise a campaign for on-site website actions, which can easily be mitigated by choosing traffic objectives.
What's the news?TikTok
announced a new feature 'Creator Search Insights' which allows you to gain insight into what people are searching for on TikTok and identify content gaps where there is search demand but a lack of content.
How it works: Creators can start tapping into these insights by typing "Creator Search Insights" in the search bar (creators will soon be able to find it directly from Creator Tools, in Settings).
Creator Search Insights will surface topics that are searched for often. Topics can be sorted by category (like tourism, sports, and science) or For You (topics related to the type of content you create). Creators can also filter for content gap topics. These topics are searched for often, but aren't featured in a large number of videos on TikTok.
What pharma marketers need to know?
For now, this feature is only available in certain regions but has the potential to be a great tool to help inform your content strategy. The 'For You' and trending in 'science' tabs are a great place to start analysing some search trends and opportunities.
Get the insider tips on how to use TikTok for pharma, including risk mitigation pointers, in our
TikTok mini-course.
