Tiago Bianchi
Research expert covering internet & gaming in Latin America and Spain
Get in touch with us nowHow strong is TikTok in Spain?
Having the country as its seventh-largest market in Europe, TikTok is the second most downloaded app in Spain, only behind the shopping platform Shein, besides ranking third in consumer spending Data.ai ranking, and sixth in monthly active users (MAU). With a small local workforce, the ByteDance-owned company has only created its Spanish subsidiary in the last quarter of 2020, being attached to its bigger headquarters in the United Kingdom. One year after establishing itself on Spanish soil, the app generated a revenue of around 4.76 million U.S. dollars in the first quarter of 2022, stabilizing at around half of this value in the subsequent quarters.What are TikTok challenges in Spain?
Based on its meteoric growth, TikTok manages to rank as the fourth favorite social media platform in Spain to around 7.6 percent of Spanish social media users. Meanwhile, its main competitor Instagram is the platform of choice for around 23 percent of the same audience. Even in the face of vetoes on government devices of the European Union, TikTok has not yet suffered any official threats of being banned in the country. It does, however, experience a relatively high amount of content removal and data requests from Spanish agencies and governments regarding content published on the platform, although without the strong political pressure of larger markets.How do Spaniards use TikTok?
Widely acknowledged and with an overall high satisfaction rate among Spanish social users, TikTok’s addictive user experience and its ability to turn video content viral put it among the platforms with the longest daily usage in Spain. With a user engagement of almost 80 minutes per day, more than half of TikTok users in the country claimed to access the app daily, with at least 29 percent of them doing it several times.“News and entertainment” was the most popular interest among Spanish profiles on TikTok, although categories like beauty and entertainment, apps, clothing and accessories , and personal services were chosen by more than three-quarters of the local users. Most popular among Spanish younger generations, the video-based platform was also used by around 14 percent of professionals in Spain for e-commerce purposes.
TikTok’s digital and social advertising in Spain
With video portals and social media being the main channels digital advertising in Spain and most of the investments directed towards mobile devices, TikTok finds a fertile ground in the sector’s fifth largest market in Europe. The network’s potential for providing inspiration for fashion and beauty trends and the country’s growing influencer market find an audience of more than half of its social media market.With around a fourth of social media users using TikTok to follow influencers, content creators dominate Spanish TikTok, being among the most followed accounts in the country. Of course, Spain also adds its own flavor of musicians and football players, with singer Rosalía and its major football clubs, Real Madrid, and FC Barcelona being among its most popular accounts. Additionally, Spain’s capital Madrid stars among the most popular travel destinations on the platform, proving the success of the match between the Chinese platform and the Mediterranean country.
