Digiday+ Research Deep Dive: Are publishers shifting their social video efforts to focus on TikTok instead of YouTube?

Digiday’s surveys found that while the share of publishers using YouTube is still slightly higher than the share of publishers using TikTok, the group’s YouTube usage is declining while TikTok usage continues to increase. Just under three-quarters of publisher professionals (71%) this year said their titles posted content on YouTube in the past month, compared to just over two-thirds (67%) who said the same about TikTok.

However, the 71% of publishers who reported using YouTube this year is a slight decrease compared to the 73% who reported using the platform last year, and a significant decrease compared to the 83 % who said they would use them in 2022. Meanwhile, the 67% of publishers who said they were using TikTok this year is a notable increase compared to the 61% who said they used the platform last year, and an even larger increase compared to the 51 % who reported using them this year.

However, publishers’ ad spend on both platforms differs significantly based on usage, Digiday’s survey found. Less than a third of publishers (29%) said this year that their titles bought advertising on YouTube in the last month, and less than a fifth (19%) said the same about TikTok – leaving plenty of room for both platforms to grow in the coming years as they focus their efforts on selling advertising to publishers.

It’s possible that the increasing use of TikTok by publishers is partly due to how much the group values ​​the platform in terms of branding. Digiday’s surveys found that the percentage of publishers who find TikTok valuable or extremely valuable for their branding efforts increased this year compared to last year.

61 percent of publisher professionals told Digiday this year that TikTok was valuable or extremely valuable for branding, a significant increase from 46% last year and 44% the year before. Breaking the data down further, the percentage of publishers who said the platform was valuable for brand building (as opposed to “extremely or somewhat valuable”) saw a particular increase this year – 39% of publishers said so in 2024 said TikTok was valuable for branding, up from a quarter (25%) in 2023. Meanwhile, the percentage of publishers saying TikTok was not very valuable for branding fell to 4% from 14% last year % this year, and those who said it was not valuable at all saw a similar decline: from 11% last year to 4% this year.

While TikTok’s change in this category has been more dramatic year-over-year, YouTube’s value to publishers’ branding efforts has increased slightly in recent years and remains at a high percentage. This year, 62% of publisher professionals said YouTube is valuable or extremely valuable for branding, up slightly from 60% last year and 57% the year before.

It’s also worth noting that in Digiday’s surveys this year and last year, zero respondents said YouTube was not valuable at all for branding. But the proportion of publishers who say the platform is extremely valuable for brand building has fallen significantly this year, from 30% in 2023 to just 8% in 2024. At the same time, however, the percentage of publishers who Considering YouTube valuable has declined sharply (as opposed to extremely or somewhat valuable) for branding, rising from 30% last year to a whopping 54% this year.

Obviously, both YouTube and TikTok are important parts of publishers’ brand strategies – but the same can’t be said when it comes to their revenue, Digiday surveys have found. Less than half of publisher professionals (43%) said this year that YouTube was valuable or extremely valuable for increasing their company’s revenue, and just over a third (37%) said the same about TikTok.

And while the percentage of publishers who found YouTube valuable (as opposed to extremely or somewhat valuable) rose from 29% in 2023 to 35% in 2024, the percentage who found the platform extremely valuable fell over time of the year from 21% to 8% in the same period. If we look deeper into the data, TikTok, on the other hand, has held fairly steady in this category: 33% of publishers this year said the platform was valuable for increasing their company’s revenue, compared to 30% last year and 4% say it is extremely valuable this year, compared to 7% last year.

Another data point to note is that the percentage of publishers saying TikTok is not valuable at all for driving revenue fell from 25% in 2022 to just 11% in 2023, then fell back to 25 in 2024 % to rise. It’s very clear that publishers haven’t quite cracked TikTok yet.

TikTok’s value to publishers’ branding is reflected in how often they post on the platform compared to YouTube, Digiday’s survey found. A third of publisher professionals (33%) told Digiday this year that they post on TikTok every day – a percentage that has remained consistent since 2022. The percentage of publishers posting daily on YouTube has also remained stable in recent years, but it is lower than the percentage posting every day on TikTok: 27% of publisher pros told Digiday this year that they post on YouTube.

For both platforms, the most common post cadence for publishers is “a few times a week” or “once a week” (which we categorized as “at least once a week”) – with TikTok also performing slightly better than YouTube in this category. This year, 57 percent of publisher professionals said they post on TikTok at least once a week (significantly higher than the 37% who said the same last year, but on par with the 53% who said this the year before ). Meanwhile, this year, 54% said they post to YouTube at least once a week (a percentage that has remained stable since 2022).

Twenty percent of publishing professionals this year said they post to YouTube one, two, or three times a month (or “at least once a month” in our data), while significantly fewer than 10% said the same about their posting frequency TikTok said this year.

Interestingly, Digiday’s survey found that publishers are investing more in creating original content for YouTube than for TikTok – with both platforms seeing a big increase in this type of investment since last year. 92% of publisher pros told Digiday this year that they are investing at least a little in creating original content for YouTube, and 91% said the same about TikTok – so in this case the platforms are about even. However, last year, 71% of publishers said they had invested at least a little in original content for YouTube, while 67% said the same for TikTok, illustrating this major leap.

The biggest difference between the two platforms can be seen when we look at the percentage of publishers that invest heavily in creating original content. Here YouTube is ahead of TikTok. More than a quarter of publishers (28%) said their companies are investing heavily in creating original content for YouTube this year, compared to 18% last year. Meanwhile, less than a fifth (17%) said they were investing heavily in original content for TikTok, compared to 11% last year.

While YouTube is slightly ahead of TikTok in terms of publishers’ investment in original content for the platforms, publishers are investing more in original content for both YouTube and TikTok this year than last year.