New Data From Conviva Illuminates TikTok’s Explosive Growth, Top Brands on the Platform and the Key to Gaining Followers

Conviva, the intelligence cloud for streaming media, released its second annual TikTok Benchmarks & Strategy Guide today, examining more than 900 brand accounts on TikTok, with a combined 612.7 million followers. The report details which brands are most effectively leveraging the platform and highlights TikTok’s explosive growth over the past year as accounts amassed an average of 494,000 new followers from February 2020 to February 2021.

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“As a result, brands must quickly figure out how to leverage this medium, as those who don’t will simply be left behind.”

“TikTok has exploded in the past year,” said Nick Cicero, VP of Strategy, Conviva. “The brands posting consistent, authentic and quality content have risen to the top, reaping the biggest gains in terms of followers and engagement.”

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The report found the average brand account on TikTok posted 167 videos in a year with the top 20 most followed accounts posting five times as often with an average of 862 total videos in a year. As a category, sports media accounts (Overtime, ESPN, Barstool, etc.) saw the largest yearly growth on TikTok with an increase of 1.179 million followers; next were streaming accounts (Netflix, Discovery, Disney, etc.), which gained an average of 825,000 followers. Netflix was the biggest winner on TikTok in the past year, securing 10.6 million new followers, followed by ESPN with 10 million new followers.

Other findings include:

• Conviva analyzed the TikTok accounts of eight sports leagues and their teams: La Liga, MLB, MLS, NBA, NFL, NHL, Premier League and Serie A. Of these, Premier League teams had the highest average number of followers at 917,000, followed by La Liga at 814,000 and the NFL at 565,000.
• FC Barcelona was the most followed sports team on TikTok with 7.6 million followers, followed by Real Madrid at 4.6 million.
• The most followed U.S. sports team was the Golden State Warriors with 2.6 million followers, trailed closely by the Kansas City Chiefs at 1.7 million. These were the only American teams to break into the top 10.
• Of the brands measured, Red Bull had 5.2 million followers but came in second to Guinness World Records with 11.3 million followers. Within the top 10 brands, however, Red Bull claimed four of the top spots with regional accounts for Red Bull Australia, Red Bull Espana and Red Bull Italia also making the top 10.
• Gaming was strongly represented in the top 10 brand TikTok accounts with Roblox, Fortnite and Xbox securing spots on the list.

“Social videos in general, and TikTok in particular, are here to stay as they deliver short bouts of entertainment to eager fans and consumers,” continued Cicero. “As a result, brands must quickly figure out how to leverage this medium, as those who don’t will simply be left behind.”

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