The Journey of Short Video Platform Giants: TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram
The History of Short Video Content Popularity Across Social Media Platform Giants
Advertise Broadly! Place your Ads on 3 of the Most Popular Social Media in Indonesia.
Social media has now become a part of our everyday lives. According to the data displayed on the website statista.com, someone could spend at least 147 minutes on social media a day in 2022. The number has risen significantly, as can be seen, that, in 2012, the number only reached 90 minutes a day. Not only the time spent on social media, but also the number of users is rapidly increasing. Just about 20 years ago, social media platforms such as MySpace were used by certain people to do certain things such as bands sharing their music and concert days. That is not the case nowadays, as 4.26 billion people are connected through various platforms of social media, and this is, of course, good for business, as 4.26 billion people worldwide are your potential customers. Trying to advertise to 4.26 billion people seems a bit overwhelming however, thus it is recommended to start small, to advertise to a country, who's half of the population uses social media on a daily basis, a country such as Indonesia. We then recommend these top 3 social media to be used as your advertising platform, to broaden your market in Indonesia.
As one of the most popular social media in Indonesia, Facebook is a prime example of a thriving platform on which you should advertise your products. As of August 2022, there are approximately 195.2 million Facebook users in Indonesia. With more than half of the country’s population on the platform, an opportunity to advertise your brand should not be missed. Before advertising on this platform, there are some things that you should consider, and budgeting is one of the most crucial things. When it comes to advertising on Facebook, one should consider the cost of putting on advertisements on the platform, and that varies greatly, depending on the audience (i.e. the narrower the audience, the cheaper), the duration of the ad campaign, the exact time as to when one’s ads are advertised (the later it is, the cheaper, starting from midnight until 6 A.M. are considered the cheapest of times to place an ad) and many other factors.
Research shows that, on average, advertisers spend $0.94 on CPC (Cost per Click), which is cheaper than advertising on YouTube, LinkedIn, or Instagram. The format of your advertisement may also vary greatly. Facebook allows a 240-minutes long advertisement to be published on their platform, but that does not necessarily mean that you should use all of those times! Engaging, short, and direct messages may be contained within a 15-second-long video. Image ads are also quite popular among advertisers on Facebook as it allows people to read carefully what they are advertising. Another recently popular ad form on Facebook is a story ad, in which your advertisements can be seen by users through the Stories feature.
103 million people are on Instagram as of 2022. With almost half of the Indonesian population using Instagram, it is then an opportunity ripe for the taking. Each month, almost 80% of Instagram users follow at least one commercial profile, and 72% of them have made a purchase using the app. Though the journey taken before buying a product vary from customer to customer, at least 62% of those numbers are interested in buying a product after seeing an advertisement on Instagram. Such results should not be too shocking, as Instagram’s algorithms are programmed to find out what the users like and dislike.
With this in mind, no matter how big your company is, with the right customization to attract and engage customers, your company could thrive through Instagram Marketing. Keep in mind that the majority of Instagram users are young adults, with ages ranging from 18-30 years old, thus your target audience is clear enough for you to make interesting advertisements. Also worth mentioning are the types of advertisements that you could choose on the platform, as choices are quite abundant. The simplest ones to spot are advertisements that appear in the Stories section, and Feed section, each has its indicators to let users know that they are indeed advertisements, such as the word “Sponsored” or “Shop now” with direct links to the advertiser’s website or profile.
As with Facebook, advertising on Instagram will cost you money, albeit slightly cheaper. The process of advertising on Instagram is also more or less the same as with Facebook, with the highest bidder winning the slot for advertising on the platform. The relevancy of your ad is also contributing to the cost that you might spend. Should Instagram find your ads to be relevant to its users, the cost would also be higher. Another thing to keep in mind is competitors. The more companies try to advertise to the same target audience, the fiercer the bidding war gets. This might mean that you need to spend more budget on the CPC (Cost-per-Clicks)! Other factors related to the competitors are holiday events, day of the week, time of advertising, and many more. Comparing the probable cost for advertising on Facebook and Instagram, it is clear that advertising on the latter is a bit cheaper than the former. CPC are projected to be somewhere between $0.20 - $2.00 for Instagram and $0.97 for Facebook. CPM (Cost per Mille/1000 views) is half for Instagram than it is for Facebook, with $6.70 for the former, and $12.07 for the latter. With such costs and a clear target audience, it is certainly a risk worth taking!
TikTok
With 99 million users in Indonesia, and with more than 10 million active users (i.e. those who make content on the platform), TikTok certainly has a place in the hearts of netizens (Indonesian internet users). Although it was banned by the government in June 2018, it has since then gained popularity among the population of netizens. As a result of this newly gained popularity, many companies try their luck by placing their advertisements on TikTok. The scale of the companies varies as well, ranging from startup companies to multinational companies such as Mercedes-Benz. With such popularity, TikTok offers many advertising options that you can choose to promote your brand even further. Advertisement types that you can choose to vary from pre-roll ads (your ads will be shown once a user opens the application), brand takeover ads (your ads will be shown before a user watches another video), and top-view ads (your ads will be shown on the top of the ‘feeds’ section of the application). Before advertising however, you need to first bid for the cost of operation.
The cost of operations can be divided into three options, CPC (Cost per Click), CPM (Cost per Mille/1000 views), and CPV (Cost per View). It should also be noted that before starting an ad campaign, you need to set a budget of around $500, or about Rp7.000.000, but with growing interest and popularity on the platform, it is a risk worth taking. In practice, one of the popular forms of advertising on this platform is live shopping. It is a practice in which the sellers advertise their products while they are going live on the platform. Mostly it is performed by those who sell products under the fashion and device categories, although other categories such as decorations and home appliances are also quite popular. While going live, the sellers showcase their products, thus showing to the audiences their uses and the benefits of owning one.
