TikTok Breaks $15 Billion Barrier in Lifetime Consumer Spend

TikTok has crossed $15 billion in lifetime global consumer spending across the iOS App Store and Google Play, Sensor Tower Store Intelligence estimates reveal.

TikTok joins Honor of Kings, the multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA) game from Tencent that is immensely popular in China, as the only apps to have reached the vaunted milestone. It may be awhile before we see another app reach $15 billion. Two other mobile games (Monster Strike and Candy Crush Saga) have reached the $10 billion threshold and 15 additional apps are currently above $5 billion. TikTok’s dominance among non-games is even more pronounced – YouTube and Tinder are the only other non-games among the top 10 apps with each around $8 billion in all-time consumer spend across iOS and Google Play.

Nearly $7 billion (47%) of TikTok’s lifetime consumer spend came from China, where the app is known as Douyin. Earlier this year, the United States overtook China to become TikTok’s largest market by consumer spend across iOS and Google Play (though it’s worth noting that the figure for China is iOS only since Google Play is not available there). Overall, the US still trails China with around $3.2 billion in all-time consumer spend (22% of the global total). Germany, Japan, and Saudi Arabia round out the top five markets with each accounting for approximately 3%.

Looking Back at TikTok’s Ascent

The short video app took the world by storm following ByteDance’s acquisition of musical.ly in November 2017. The app now ranks fifth in all-time downloads, only trailing Meta’s big four apps (WhatsApp Messenger, Facebook, Messenger, and Instagram). TikTok’s totals include those from musical.ly before it was merged with TikTok as well as Douyin, the localized version for China.

TikTok’s growth was dampened a bit in 2020 when it was banned in India, the world’s largest market for downloads across iOS and Google Play. In spite of this TikTok has still remained one of the most popular apps globally. In more recent quarters, only Instagram has rivaled TikTok in terms of new downloads. To dive deeper into the latest trends on mobile and beyond, check out our Q2 2024 Digital Market Index report.

Revolutionizing How Non-Games Monetize on Mobile

TikTok’s meteoric rise to $15 billion is all the more impressive considering the app originally relied on advertising for its monetization and it didn’t gain much traction on its in-app purchases until several years later in 2020. The app’s breakthrough monetization strategy – offering users the opportunity to buy coins which can be used to tip creators – has propelled the app to unprecedented heights on mobile. This strategy is still fairly unique. Non-game apps have historically relied on advertising or subscriptions as the focal point of their monetization.

Looking at the quarterly breakdown, TikTok’s recent dominance is even more striking. Consumers spent more than $1.3 billion on in-app purchases in TikTok in Q2 2024, marking the fifth consecutive quarter of at least $1 billion. By comparison, Honor of Kings' best ever quarter was $765 million in Q2 2021. If the recent trends hold, TikTok could catch Honor of Kings to take the title as the top mobile app by all-time consumer spend within the next 12 months.

And Don’t Forget About Advertising!

As TikTok has risen to the top app in the world in terms of in-app purchase revenue, it’s worth remembering that the app still makes the majority of its revenue from advertising. Digital ad spend on TikTok surpassed $2 billion in the United States alone in Q2 2024 according to data from Pathmatics by Sensor Tower as seen in our Digital Market Index report.

While TikTok’s ad spend still trails those of Meta’s Facebook and Instagram, its share of the market has continued to rise in recent years. So far in 2024, TikTok has accounted for 12.2% of US ad spend between five of the top social networks. This was a nice increase from when it accounted for around 9% of ad spend in 2022.