Speaker 1: Welcome to Strictly Business, Varieties weekly podcast featuring conversations with
Speaker 1: industry leaders about the business of media and entertainment. I'm
Speaker 1: Cynthia Littleton, co editor in chief of Variety Today, my
Speaker 1: guest is Blake Chandley, VP of Global Business Solutions and
Speaker 1: head of Ad Sales for TikTok. TikTok has been at
Speaker 1: the center of the storm around social media. The platform
Speaker 1: has enjoyed meteoric growth over the past year. It's Chinese
Speaker 1: parent company, byte Dance, has also been drawn into the
Speaker 1: geopolitical tensions between the US and China, but the drama
Speaker 1: hasn't dampened the interest of marketers in using the platform
Speaker 1: and it's many tools that are designed, in Chandley's words,
Speaker 1: to inspire creativity and spark joy. In the conversation. Up next,
Speaker 1: the former Facebook executive offers insights into TikTok's rise and
Speaker 1: how the user base and audience has changed during the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to Strictly Business. I'm really excited to hear
Speaker 1: from Blake, who is TikTok's VP of Global Business Solutions
Speaker 1: and head of ad Sales for one of the most
Speaker 1: dynamic media platforms that has come along in the in
Speaker 1: the last few years, a time when we have seen
Speaker 1: no shortage of new platforms arriving. But TikTok has made
Speaker 1: quite an impact in a short time, and we're fortunate
Speaker 1: to have Blake to talk to us about the service
Speaker 1: and its evolution. Thank you so much for joining us, Blake. Oh,
Speaker 1: it's more pleasure. Thanks for having me. Well, you are
Speaker 1: coming on just about your one year anniversary with TikTok,
Speaker 1: a company that has been much in the news and
Speaker 1: has made a big impact on pop culture. Can you
Speaker 1: tell us about, you know what, there were so many
Speaker 1: there were so many extraordinary circumstances of circumstances and conditions
Speaker 1: that that certainly made a lot of you know, made
Speaker 1: for ripe conditions for people looking for new kinds of
Speaker 1: short form content and new avenues for creativity, which is
Speaker 1: one of the things that TikTok really has inspired. Can
Speaker 1: you talk us through sort of what were some of
Speaker 1: the accelerants that made such a huge growth here for TikTok. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, Well one almost two years now, funny enough,
Speaker 1: and time time flies. I've been with the company um
Speaker 1: and twenty was an interesting year by any measure, as
Speaker 1: you can imagine, um, you know, from our perspective, what
Speaker 1: started out as what we thought would be an amazing
Speaker 1: growth here quickly shifted as COVID came in and people
Speaker 1: started working from home, and then we had Black Lives Matter,
Speaker 1: And there are a number of things that happened through
Speaker 1: the year, but if you look at overall, I think
Speaker 1: one of the things that always surprised us and looking
Speaker 1: back to probably shouldn't come as any surprise given the
Speaker 1: platform is you know, content platform, it's an entertainment platform.
Speaker 1: Is the universal appreciation, universal kind of adoption of the
Speaker 1: platform across all generations. And our mission is to inspire
Speaker 1: creativity and bring joy and I think we did that
Speaker 1: throughout the year in a year where a lot of
Speaker 1: people really appreciated and needing some of that on a
Speaker 1: daily basis. But what really struck me was there was
Speaker 1: a shift us as we saw the year go on
Speaker 1: in two areas. One was around content, right, so diversity
Speaker 1: and content um and then the kinds of creators that
Speaker 1: were creating content the platform, you know, went from you know,
Speaker 1: pretty simple offering to diversity around cooking and d i
Speaker 1: y and education, and we had these amazing creators just
Speaker 1: telling inspiring stories all year long, and that that just continued,
Speaker 1: which then led to the adoption of the platform for
Speaker 1: variety of audiences and so the diversity diversification of our
Speaker 1: audience base. UM went from a relatively younger audience I
Speaker 1: gen z to a an audience has spanned multi generations UM.
Speaker 1: And I think it's all based around storytelling. And I
Speaker 1: was thinking the other day, is we all kind of
Speaker 1: have our own thoughts going into a new year that
Speaker 1: I remember days when we sit around television as a
Speaker 1: family and watch TV, right, and and that was you know,
Speaker 1: going back aways, and it was linear TV, and that's
Speaker 1: just what we did, right, UM on a Sunday night
Speaker 1: or dus And night, or whenever we have our favorite
Speaker 1: TV show and we'd all sit around his family and
Speaker 1: we just don't do that anymore. Screens have really fragmented
Speaker 1: that experience. And so you know, my kids have their
Speaker 1: screens and we have all my wife and I have
Speaker 1: our screens, and most of the time they don't connect. Right.
Speaker 1: What we saw a lot of this year, and then
Speaker 1: looking back, it is a phenomenon, was this connection of generations, right,
Speaker 1: and so people were treating TikTok's and younger generations were
Speaker 1: introducing their parents and grandparents the platform, and so there
Speaker 1: was this this unity again around a family, around this
Speaker 1: content that just didn't exist before. And so I kind
Speaker 1: of feel like there's this interesting movement to stake a
Speaker 1: place around You're connecting that family again, which you know,
Speaker 1: we we we we feel really strongly is part of
Speaker 1: our mission to really you know, to really aspire creativity
Speaker 1: and bring joy across all different people. It's a different
Speaker 1: form of family friendly entertainment on TikTok for sure, much
Speaker 1: of it. What was it that and I'm sure that
Speaker 1: diversification of audience must have been music to your ears,
Speaker 1: being you know, in in charge of selling advertising on
Speaker 1: the platform. What was it though that in in your experience,
Speaker 1: what was it that drove the initial adoption? What was
Speaker 1: the I think that I brought people to the platform. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a great it's a great question. I think that
Speaker 1: a lot of people you associate associate us with being
Speaker 1: a social platform, right, and there's this automatic direct association
Speaker 1: with some other players in the space of which role
Speaker 1: intimately familiar. I mean, I think the big difference is
Speaker 1: we're not like we're we're we're interest based for content
Speaker 1: platform UM. And so the ability to people to find
Speaker 1: content that's relevant and interesting in them is really what
Speaker 1: you know, really really what the four you Feed does,
Speaker 1: and that's very, very different than the experience people are
Speaker 1: gonna find anywhere else where. It's reliant to on a
Speaker 1: connection to friends and family and so on and so forth.
Speaker 1: And this is really, in my view, the next generation
Speaker 1: of television, right. And it's it's it's short form, it's
Speaker 1: easy digest it doesn't require a huge commitment in terms
Speaker 1: of time, although people do find themselves once they start
Speaker 1: kind of getting sucked into the TikTok like uh, you know,
Speaker 1: vortex and spending a lot of time. UM. But it's
Speaker 1: easily digestible, it's interesting, and it's all designed specifically for
Speaker 1: you based on your interests UM. And that's how the
Speaker 1: four you Feed really has generated a lot of positivity. UM.
Speaker 1: Of course, TikTok has been in the headlines, you know, again,
Speaker 1: coming off of a pretty incredible year for the for culture,
Speaker 1: for politics, for certainly for public health. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: TikTok and the parent company, bike Dance have been in
Speaker 1: the headlines. There has been there's been a lot of
Speaker 1: strife at the at the political level in the US
Speaker 1: about about the Chinese ownership of bike Dance and how
Speaker 1: how that you know, may or may not be figuring
Speaker 1: into larger kind of geopolitical and business considerations. I realized
Speaker 1: that all of that is going on, you know, at
Speaker 1: a step above the area that you oversee. But can
Speaker 1: you talk about how that the impact of the political
Speaker 1: drama and the uncertainty about whether the company had to
Speaker 1: be sold to continue to operate in the US or
Speaker 1: how did how did that impact your growth? Obviously TikTok
Speaker 1: is growing apace, but was that was that difficult? Did
Speaker 1: that impede growth at all? And was at a difficult
Speaker 1: conversation for you with the marketers that you are selling
Speaker 1: the service to. Ye, It's an appropriate question, and it's
Speaker 1: something that's you know, it's not something else spent a
Speaker 1: lot of time to go too deep in because we're
Speaker 1: you know, still currently in discussions you know, with the
Speaker 1: governments and the regulatory body about you know, about some
Speaker 1: of that. But listen, we we've been pretty clear that
Speaker 1: one there's been a lot of media coverage on it,
Speaker 1: right and uh, you couldn't escape it. It's it's it's
Speaker 1: dropped off a little bit in some of the current
Speaker 1: UM media considerations. But one we've been pretty clear that
Speaker 1: we we just disagree with some of the fundamental premises
Speaker 1: that the government put forward UM in terms of security
Speaker 1: of data, access of data. You know, we're TikTok does
Speaker 1: not exist in China. Are data don sit in China,
Speaker 1: It's it's u S data sits in the US. It
Speaker 1: was somewhere doundancy in Singapore. So, like you know, we're
Speaker 1: very comfortable with with the with the precautions and the
Speaker 1: things that we've done as a company UM, but we've
Speaker 1: agreed we disagree with the government on that one in
Speaker 1: many cases, but we continue to work with them like
Speaker 1: we have we have ongoing almost daily dialogue with the
Speaker 1: governments around how do we resolve this because at the
Speaker 1: end of the day, we want to protect our users
Speaker 1: and we want to you know, that's a huge game
Speaker 1: and we have u is protecting our user base and
Speaker 1: it's a number one priority as a company. And so
Speaker 1: anything we do to empower our our audience or a
Speaker 1: hundred million plus users in the US, UM protect them,
Speaker 1: empower them. It's it's really we feel an obligation to
Speaker 1: protect them in that sid and so you know that
Speaker 1: comes with it. You know a lot of different discussions
Speaker 1: we need to have and and to get people comfortable
Speaker 1: with that. But we're ongoing negotiations, discussions with the objective
Speaker 1: of having an outcome that's positive for our users. Do
Speaker 1: you have a sense that the the administration changed, the
Speaker 1: incoming by an administration might have a different view. I
Speaker 1: can't really speak to that right now. I know there's
Speaker 1: a lot of discussions taking places. You can imagine there's
Speaker 1: a lot of um dialogue across the aisle everywhere. But
Speaker 1: right now, I think I'll just let that be and
Speaker 1: we'll see where things fall over the next few weeks.
Speaker 1: Was it at all? Has it again at the sort
Speaker 1: of Washington drama? Has it hasn't been a damper at all?
Speaker 1: Four marketers? I mean, it seems like the TikTok story
Speaker 1: for the the TikTok itself has been nothing but growth.
Speaker 1: And I'm guessing that that's that that is what what
Speaker 1: people want to hear at a time when it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's reaching audiences is harder than ever. Yeah, we've been
Speaker 1: really really surprised surprise of the support I mean the community,
Speaker 1: the advertising community in general, whether the advertisers agencies have
Speaker 1: really supported us through this whole process. And we've had
Speaker 1: obviously discussions and dialogue around it, UM and but but
Speaker 1: the universal support received has been UM really really positive.
Speaker 1: We spend a lot more of our time talking around
Speaker 1: brand safety and community safety and what we're doing not
Speaker 1: only is an individual company, but as an industry to
Speaker 1: protect users. Then we have around some of the political
Speaker 1: dynamics that are taking place, and so the vast majority
Speaker 1: of our time has spent talking around those subject matters.
Speaker 1: You do a lot of obviously a lot of creative
Speaker 1: things with marketers and sponsorship. How can you talk in
Speaker 1: general about kind of how your your typical how a
Speaker 1: typical market deal with tiptop TikTok works? Is it? Is
Speaker 1: it CPM based, is it time? How do you how
Speaker 1: do you? I said, if you start the highest level,
Speaker 1: it's it's a fundamental change, right, we're being a little
Speaker 1: bit I think we'll be a little bit disruptive in
Speaker 1: that sense. UM. Digital marketing has gotten very much around
Speaker 1: programmatic and it's you know, it's very tech driven. UM,
Speaker 1: it's we've lost the art of storytelling and I think
Speaker 1: that's something that we identified very early on the brands
Speaker 1: one more of and given the inspirational environment and the
Speaker 1: storytelling takes place every day with our users and our
Speaker 1: comedy in general, what brands want to do is find
Speaker 1: a voice in that right. And so the conversations we
Speaker 1: have a brand's first and foremost is around what did
Speaker 1: their voice look like? An environment around authenticity, right, how
Speaker 1: do they storytell? How do they how are they quote
Speaker 1: less than perfect? Because at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you know the concept of going and creating a million
Speaker 1: dollar mini film and then put it onto all these
Speaker 1: different platforms, it doesn't resonate as well in the put more.
Speaker 1: People want to see authenticity. Um, you know, they want
Speaker 1: they want brands come in and be involved. They want
Speaker 1: brands to invite them to be involved. And so the
Speaker 1: conversation first and foremost is around creativity and the role
Speaker 1: the brands play the platform and the roles the brands
Speaker 1: play a really really important role. Um. We do not
Speaker 1: want brands to be perceived as kind of advertising. I
Speaker 1: mean I have to watch it in order to have
Speaker 1: access to this free content. We want users look at
Speaker 1: the branding content and say, wow, that was cool, I
Speaker 1: want to watch it again, right, And so we see
Speaker 1: that kind of path, we see that kind of passion
Speaker 1: of brands to do it right. And there are a
Speaker 1: number of brands that have UM. All year long, we
Speaker 1: saw amazing executions from brands that really inspired people and
Speaker 1: drew them in and and ask people to participate. And
Speaker 1: so that's the first and foremost the conversations we have
Speaker 1: with brands. And then the next question is how do
Speaker 1: we amplify that and how do we you know, kind
Speaker 1: of invest behind that to make sure we get the
Speaker 1: right reach and frequency and the right kpi s or
Speaker 1: measurement that that that they need in order to you
Speaker 1: to invests. But would you say that marketers come to
Speaker 1: you do they Are they generally looking kind of in
Speaker 1: the age demographic based buying or are they looking for
Speaker 1: we want to be in your anything that involves cooking
Speaker 1: or anything that involves skateboarding or something like by topic
Speaker 1: and more or is it a mix of both. It's
Speaker 1: mixed both, Like you have people that you know, certainly
Speaker 1: there are certain audiences the brands are targeting based on
Speaker 1: their brand right UM, and so they're super there's typically
Speaker 1: some demographic considerations as well as contextual um and so
Speaker 1: we work with brands on both those parts. We'll take
Speaker 1: a quick break before hearing more from Blake Chandley about
Speaker 1: TikTok Ad campaigns that move the needle this year. Welcome
Speaker 1: back to strictly Business. Here's more with TikTok Ad sales
Speaker 1: chief Blake Channelly. You give us a for instance of
Speaker 1: a of an execution or two that you think really
Speaker 1: harnessed the capabilities that TikTok brings, the unique capabilities of
Speaker 1: TikTok Um. Yeah, I think that, I think that, I
Speaker 1: think I think there were two that they come up
Speaker 1: and I look at I look at it almost in
Speaker 1: two seconds. They are the big brands, the ones we
Speaker 1: all know, these national brands that are amazing marketers that
Speaker 1: we have our smaller SMB community which is actually doing
Speaker 1: some really in traditional stuff as well. Um the there
Speaker 1: was one there was one campaign by under Armour that
Speaker 1: was done this kind of the holiday period which was
Speaker 1: show up and show off, which we had. They retained
Speaker 1: a number of our creators and that was another. That's
Speaker 1: our core premacy work with brands, lars connecting with the
Speaker 1: creators or some people call them influencers, but um to
Speaker 1: help them tell their story and bring their story in
Speaker 1: life from the platform. And so they retained a number
Speaker 1: of their athletes to commit and do some interesting things
Speaker 1: with some music in the BA around that were there
Speaker 1: were there were great right, whether it be basketball related
Speaker 1: or whatever it might be. And then they basically put
Speaker 1: that out there to our community and said, you know,
Speaker 1: show up and show off, and it was around skills,
Speaker 1: around different things. And then they allowed the community to
Speaker 1: take that and to make it their own right. And
Speaker 1: so it could have been in the basketball space. It
Speaker 1: could have been someone either on a basketball's court doing
Speaker 1: something amazing with a trick shot or a donk or
Speaker 1: whatever it might be. Or there were camping. There was
Speaker 1: some creative with someone in a supermarket grabbing you know,
Speaker 1: paper towels off the top shelf. Given all their shows empty,
Speaker 1: and that was their version of showing off, right, And
Speaker 1: so have you generated? I think there are one point
Speaker 1: four billion pieces of created at one point four million
Speaker 1: pieces of creative that were that were developed by our
Speaker 1: user base in conjunction of the campaign and had eight
Speaker 1: billion views. I mean, that was one that was great,
Speaker 1: But another one which I thought was really amazing and
Speaker 1: it goes to storytelling. Was Cheerios. Um, I don't know
Speaker 1: if you're you saw this, but you know, Cheerios had
Speaker 1: an amazing commercial back in the nineties which was a
Speaker 1: great mother with a baby with cheerios on the on
Speaker 1: the on the top and then you know, normally you'd
Speaker 1: be feeding cheerials to the baby and this time the
Speaker 1: grandmother was Christmas time, saying, here's where you live, and
Speaker 1: the baby wants the cheerios and she holds it up
Speaker 1: and the baby's like, I'm gonna eat it, and then
Speaker 1: they she puts it down because here's your uncle John lives.
Speaker 1: Here's where I live, and unfortunately we all camp be together,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad that I'm here with you. And she
Speaker 1: puts two curios together and it was just a very emotional,
Speaker 1: you know, and you know General Mills and Turials, you know,
Speaker 1: no family and Christmas and holidays now and so that
Speaker 1: was that was done years and years ago television campaign
Speaker 1: while there was a creator on the platform that basically
Speaker 1: came up with an idea that said, you know, General Mills,
Speaker 1: please please please recreate this today, but use zoom and
Speaker 1: usually and so and literally the brand and she tagged
Speaker 1: General mills in and literally the brand brought it back
Speaker 1: to life, and they did an incarnation of two thousand
Speaker 1: twenty right, which had the same grandmother and the same
Speaker 1: child baby which was now grown up, and they're connecting
Speaker 1: on zoom and they had the whole behind the scenes thing,
Speaker 1: but it was very much still this emotional connection for
Speaker 1: the brand to the holiday season. And so like again
Speaker 1: that storytelling can't take place anywhere else, it has to
Speaker 1: take place in a place like this and uh, and
Speaker 1: this is one of those kind of tear jerker moments.
Speaker 1: You go, Okay, that was just an amazing piece of content.
Speaker 1: Forget the fact that it brought to us by it
Speaker 1: by brand. So those are two games. And then on
Speaker 1: small business, there was there's an amazing campaign that was
Speaker 1: done through the through the holiday of the shopping season
Speaker 1: by a small business called Two Blind Brothers, and he
Speaker 1: got some national coverage. But there are these two Blind
Speaker 1: Brothers um Bradford Bryant who had this concept, you know,
Speaker 1: called shop blind and what they essentially did was a
Speaker 1: challenge is said to people in their whole lives they've
Speaker 1: had to rely on others to shop for them or
Speaker 1: read menus or whatever it might be. And they started
Speaker 1: campaigns the Shop Blind meaning come come to our website. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, basically, give us a price point and we're
Speaker 1: gonna send youselfing. You don't know what it is, right,
Speaker 1: um and and and and and all Pro Hunter proceeds
Speaker 1: were going towards you know, retinal retinal research to help
Speaker 1: cure certain forms of blindness little people are affected by.
Speaker 1: And the idea of going to saying, you know, basically
Speaker 1: saying here's my price point and then stepping back was
Speaker 1: kind of scary, but like tens and tens and tens
Speaker 1: of thousands of people went and shop blind, right, and
Speaker 1: it just it became kind of a universal viral, had
Speaker 1: a viral component to it, which was good for you moment,
Speaker 1: which of course, you know, giving to any kind of
Speaker 1: mount for profit is, but also a brand and a
Speaker 1: product and shopping and e commerce and it all tied
Speaker 1: it together in a really kind of magical way. So
Speaker 1: those are the kind of things that we love seeing
Speaker 1: on the platform m M. And for you know, the
Speaker 1: more you grow, the more opportunities you the more opportunities
Speaker 1: you have. And as you say, these are these are
Speaker 1: fairly unique opportunities, particularly for marketers. The downside, of course,
Speaker 1: of user generated content and having an open platform like that,
Speaker 1: is that you know, a content moderation has become a
Speaker 1: huge issue for all social media platforms large and small
Speaker 1: with your mission to spark creativity and and create bursts
Speaker 1: of joy, which goodness knows we need more than ever. Now,
Speaker 1: how are you going? How are you watching the skies
Speaker 1: to make sure that bad actors don't get into your
Speaker 1: platform and put things on that you know are are
Speaker 1: decidedly less than joyful. Yeah, it's the number one thing
Speaker 1: we think about as you get imagining, especially in days
Speaker 1: like we've led up to this conversation. Um, it's an
Speaker 1: industry thing. As an industry, it's it's it's an opportunity
Speaker 1: for us to do better um. And we can call
Speaker 1: it issues whichever. It's a challenge UM. And like most
Speaker 1: we use a combination of community guidelines which are very
Speaker 1: strict around hate and speech and misinformation and everything else UM,
Speaker 1: as well as technology so machine learning to identify that
Speaker 1: as content gets loaded into platform, using machine learning to
Speaker 1: quickly identifying and training the machines to look for content
Speaker 1: that falls into a certain pattern or behavior. That's um,
Speaker 1: you know, snonymous with some of these behaviors we don't
Speaker 1: want and pulling that content for whatever reaches for whatever
Speaker 1: reaches the graph. And you know, according to our last
Speaker 1: transparency employee pulled down a hundred million pieces of content,
Speaker 1: of which nineties percent were before whatever you hit the
Speaker 1: graph and the rest of simil reactionary. And then we
Speaker 1: use human moderation, which is as people reporting content that's
Speaker 1: inappropriate they think should be considered. You know, we use
Speaker 1: the combination of machine learning and human moderators to make
Speaker 1: sure that we're identifying that that behavior, that content and
Speaker 1: pulling it down very very quickly. And then obviously, you know,
Speaker 1: on the back end, making sure that those folks that
Speaker 1: are doing that, you know, are pulled from the platform
Speaker 1: and so on. Has um has I mean with a
Speaker 1: hundred million pieces of content, that's a lot too, that's
Speaker 1: a lot to keep up with. Machine learning can do
Speaker 1: so much. Have have you found that they're given the
Speaker 1: nature of TikTok, the nature of stuff that is objectionable?
Speaker 1: Does it does it? Is it? Is it political? Is
Speaker 1: it more violent? Or is there like an is there
Speaker 1: like a thread to what you're finding that is objectionable
Speaker 1: on TikTok is attract a certain kind of of objectionable
Speaker 1: type of content versus maybe you would see on a
Speaker 1: broader social platform. Yeah, I think so many other platforms
Speaker 1: have different issues. Like I think these social the social
Speaker 1: platforms where people are connected via social kind of like
Speaker 1: their social behaviors, they have a very different challenge than
Speaker 1: we do. You know, when people are coming to the
Speaker 1: platform to create your inspired to creativity and bring joy. Um,
Speaker 1: the expectation when people come into it's just that they're
Speaker 1: not looking for that kind of content, whereas in some
Speaker 1: other platforms, I think it's expected at this point, and
Speaker 1: so that's where the voices are loudest um. And so
Speaker 1: to be fair, we have some activism, like when Black
Speaker 1: Lives Matters came up, there were people that were you know,
Speaker 1: discussing that subject, but they were doing it in a
Speaker 1: really inspirational way. It wasn't in a derogatory or crew way.
Speaker 1: It was done more of an inspirational way. And so
Speaker 1: we want people to to express express themselves. But when
Speaker 1: it turns to hate, or turns to misinformation or whatever
Speaker 1: it might be, we need to make sure that our
Speaker 1: our communities protected. So we worked really diligently on that.
Speaker 1: Have you had some tough calls into when you sort
Speaker 1: of when the human beings get involved. Have you had
Speaker 1: tough calls about what what is the line between what's
Speaker 1: okay and not okay? So the trust and safety team
Speaker 1: falls and are dip different remits. So I'd be remiss
Speaker 1: if I were to try and step in and and
Speaker 1: go too deep on the subject. I think that everybody
Speaker 1: today's world is changing so fast, and you know, people
Speaker 1: that are trying to express themselves in a negative way
Speaker 1: will continue to try and find ways to do that.
Speaker 1: You need to be able to react accordingly, and so
Speaker 1: you know, certainly there are probably moments there are tough
Speaker 1: decisions to make. UM I'm not literally to talk about
Speaker 1: those here, but certainly we'll continue to evolve our platform
Speaker 1: and iterate our platform and our policies to protect our community.
Speaker 1: Best weekend. Yeah, thank you, and that I can imagine
Speaker 1: that there's no more urgent and tougher job in the
Speaker 1: company than than keeping an eye on all of that,
Speaker 1: especially because you have the reputation for being for being
Speaker 1: um for being very you know, open and friendly to
Speaker 1: to all demographics. UM, I know Blake. You spent a
Speaker 1: long time at Facebook before joining TikTok. What what did
Speaker 1: you learn in your time in the formative years of
Speaker 1: Facebook and watching its evolution that what did you learn
Speaker 1: from Facebook that you are applying it at TikTok now?
Speaker 1: And are you seeing in any major differences in the
Speaker 1: in the growth trajectories of the platforms. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: the growth trajectors are very similar UM and and Facebook
Speaker 1: at the time. Going back, I was there for a
Speaker 1: decade from two thousand seven to seventeen. If you kind
Speaker 1: of rewind back to two thousand nine ten, before Facebook
Speaker 1: became you know the big of b myth it is today.
Speaker 1: You know, social was new, right, the social graph didn't exist.
Speaker 1: It was this new concept UM that people were trying
Speaker 1: to embrace and understand and both users right on on
Speaker 1: the growth side from the user perspective, what role did
Speaker 1: play in people's lives? UM as well as brands and
Speaker 1: and and certainly regulatory bottles and everybody else. We were
Speaker 1: all trying to make it up as we went, and
Speaker 1: so we were constantly iterating, and we were creating product,
Speaker 1: and we were moving quickly in response to different things
Speaker 1: that we saw in the market, and it's very very
Speaker 1: similar to where we are today. And we're not a
Speaker 1: social graph, we're you know, content graph from the interstgraph,
Speaker 1: which is new. It's very it's very very different, UM,
Speaker 1: and it's had its own different opportunities and challenges and
Speaker 1: everything else. And so for us, it's really around a
Speaker 1: couple core things. One is hiring amazing people like people
Speaker 1: ultimately health to find what the future of the business
Speaker 1: will look like. And so we have great people on
Speaker 1: the product side, the ad side, marketing side, just to
Speaker 1: have amazing individuals who have open minds or what we
Speaker 1: call learners, and we want to create a very learning culture. UM.
Speaker 1: We want to be able to move very quickly, and
Speaker 1: change is hard. Like if you look at some of
Speaker 1: the big companies now, it's much more difficult for a
Speaker 1: Facebook or Google to shift you know, bought businesses as
Speaker 1: big as they are, Whereas we're still nimble enough that
Speaker 1: we can move very very quickly UM if we see
Speaker 1: something that's working, and so we do a lost a lot,
Speaker 1: a lot a lot of testing, iteration UM. And so
Speaker 1: some of the core values I think we saw back
Speaker 1: in the day are similar in terms of moving fast
Speaker 1: and then trying to build product that's that's relevant for
Speaker 1: our users and our brands and uh, and then there
Speaker 1: are differences, like I think that we've learned a lot
Speaker 1: from you know, around data and consumer privacy and um,
Speaker 1: you know, giving users control of of of the kind
Speaker 1: of advertising they see, which historically it wasn't necessarily built
Speaker 1: into the business models that we think, you know, it
Speaker 1: could be could be really differentially differentiated going forward. So
Speaker 1: we're learning some things and werena do things a little
Speaker 1: bit differently, and we're gonna hopefully be a little bit
Speaker 1: disruptive in a very comfortable way. But I think the
Speaker 1: industries asked us to be, and they said, don't just
Speaker 1: come back and prom with a big audience with a
Speaker 1: programmatic capability. They really wants to come back and allow
Speaker 1: them to storytell again and to engage audiences in a
Speaker 1: different way that they simply haven't able to do on
Speaker 1: the mobile lice Blake, why don't you leave us with that?
Speaker 1: Why don't we end with what are you're like? What
Speaker 1: are some of your most impressive growth stats from twenty
Speaker 1: or growth stats for TikTok since it really started to
Speaker 1: take off in the US. Well, I mean, idea certainly
Speaker 1: our user based and we're now exceeding a hundred million users,
Speaker 1: which was up significantly from two thousand nineteen. And we've
Speaker 1: seen that across the world where it's not it's not
Speaker 1: really just the US we're seeing. It's um the kind
Speaker 1: of content, it's just diverse five an amazing way and
Speaker 1: types of audiences that are on the platform and changed significantly.
Speaker 1: I won't get into the metrics from revenue and brands,
Speaker 1: but you know, certainly the industry has supported us, and
Speaker 1: for that where it's really grateful and humbled. We think
Speaker 1: that by working with the smartest people in the agency world,
Speaker 1: in the client world, that we can build kind of
Speaker 1: future that is it is different where advertising becomes you know,
Speaker 1: anticipated and hope for versus something people deal with more
Speaker 1: to get contact. And so those are things that we're
Speaker 1: really focused on right now. Blake, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for taking the time to talk us through what's going
Speaker 1: on at this most dynamic media platform. We will definitely
Speaker 1: stay tuned. Thanks for listening, and please leave us a
Speaker 1: review at Apple Podcasts. We love to hear from listeners.
Speaker 1: Be sure to tune in next week when my guests
Speaker 1: will be Andrew Kosov and Roderick Johnson, the producers and
Speaker 1: financiers who run al Con Entertainment