💼 TikTok Builds for Search Growth

Today’s Insights

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This month TikTok has opened 122 roles globally tied to Search advertising. The volume of hiring suggests that Search is no longer an experimental feature for TikTok. And the platform is building out the infrastructure to try to compete for more performance marketing budget.

The push follows the ongoing rollout of TikTok’s Search Ads Campaigns, which began last year and allows brands to place keyword-targeted ads directly in TikTok’s search results page.

TikTok’s Search Ads approach borrows from Google’s playbook: pay-per-click pricing and keyword match types. But the format is uniquely TikTok, short-form video ads instead of Google’s text copy.

The Numbers

The company has hinted at growth, reporting that 57% of users engage with the search function, and 23% use it within 30 seconds of opening the app.

TikTok’s search results aren’t yet a proven ad channel. But the infrastructure is being built. The behavior is shifting. The usage is growing. And TikTok is prioritizing.

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Here’s what else you should know:

🤖 Google rolls out AI Mode to UK users

The AI-powered search feature appears as a new tab on search results pages and in the Google app. During Q2 earnings, Google reported there are over 100 million monthly active AI Mode users in the U.S. and India.

📈 YouTube is the top recipient of traffic from AI Chatbots

Data from Similarweb shows YouTube received over three times more chatbot-driven visits than Facebook and Wikipedia. For purposes of this analysis, Similarweb excluded traffic to openai.com and google.com.

🚀 Elon Musk plans to relaunch Vine in an AI-powered format

Nearly nine years after it shut down, the short-form video app could return with new AI features. However, Musk has not given a release date or explained how AI will be used in the app. It was a short message: “We’re bringing back Vine, but in AI form.”

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