TikTok has exploded into an essential marketing platform in 2025, far beyond its early reputation for dance and lip-sync videos. With over 1.58 billion monthly active users globally and an especially engaged Gen Z audience, TikTok offers brands an unprecedented opportunity to reach consumers.
More than 60% of marketers now say TikTok is their primary focus over other social networks. What makes TikTok unique is its blend of short-form video content, a powerful discovery algorithm, and growing e-commerce features, all of which converge to drive massive engagement and conversion.
Below, we break down the top TikTok marketing trends of 2025 – from influencer partnerships and creative video strategies to paid ads, viral challenges, and social commerce integration.
A recent survey shows sponsored content (53.9%) and product reviews (20.2%) are the most popular types of TikTok influencer collaborations, eclipsing live streams or branded challenges. Brands lean into relatable influencer content that feels native to the platform.
Partnering with TikTok influencers remains a cornerstone of marketing strategies, but authenticity is now prized over sheer follower counts. Brands are increasingly turning to micro-influencers (creators with ~10k–100k followers) who often deliver higher engagement rates than big-name celebrities.
Campaigns leveraging micro-influencers on TikTok average about 8.2% engagement, outperforming the 5.3% for campaigns with macro-influencers. These smaller creators cultivate tight-knit communities, making their product endorsements feel more genuine and trustworthy. As a result, they offer more cost-effective and intimate partnerships for marketers.
Influencer content on TikTok typically takes the form of short sponsored videos or product demos that blend seamlessly into users’ feeds. Sponsored posts and review-style videos account for nearly 74% of brand collaborations (by preference) on the platform, as shown above. This underscores a trend: brands want influencers to showcase products in a relatable, story-driven way, rather than overt ads.
The payoff can be huge – for example, Clinique’s TikTok influencer campaign drove a stunning 441% increase in conversion rate by letting creators authentically demonstrate the product. The takeaway is clear: genuine influencer partnerships – especially with niche micro-creators – are delivering exceptional engagement and ROI on TikTok in 2025.
TikTok’s entire ecosystem revolves around short-form video, so mastering this format is crucial. The platform’s algorithm rewards content that immediately grabs attention. Brands have learned to start their videos with a strong hook in the first 3 seconds, as TikTok’s feed is fast-paced and viewers quickly scroll if not instantly intereste. This might mean opening with a bold statement, striking visual, or a trending sound to stop thumb-scrolling in its tracks. Snappy, looping clips and clever editing are common tactics to boost watch time and repeat views.
Equally important is embracing TikTok’s authentic, unpolished style. Unlike traditional social campaigns that rely on perfectly scripted, high-production videos, TikTok audiences respond better to content that feels casual and real. Successful brands often ditch rigid content calendars in favor of responsive content that taps into the latest trends, memes, and sounds on the app. Using popular music clips or viral sound bites can amplify a video’s reach since TikTok’s algorithm elevates trend-aligned content. More than half of brands (about 52%) actively participate in TikTok’s trending challenges and cultural moments as a strategy to stay relevant.
Another key strategy is leveraging user-generated content (UGC) and community participation. TikTok users love to engage with brands that encourage duets, remixes, and genuine customer stories. UGC isn’t just filler; it’s perceived as 2.4× more authentic than traditional brand-produced videos. That authenticity translates into higher engagement because people trust peer-style recommendations.
The 2025 trend is clear—short-form content that feels human, organic, and in-the-moment performs best. Marketers should remain agile, ready to experiment with new video formats, and focus on storytelling and entertainment value over polished advertising.
One of TikTok’s biggest differentiators is its For You page algorithm, which can catapult unknown creators (or brands) to viral fame overnight. Unlike social platforms where your content mainly reaches your followers, TikTok’s algorithm-driven discovery shows videos to users who have never heard of your brand – if the content is engaging. Users are 1.8× more likely to discover new topics or brands on TikTok than on other networks, according to TikTok’s trend research. This means even a small business can suddenly reach millions if they crack the code of what TikTok’s algorithm favors.
So, what insights guide TikTok’s algorithm in 2025? Engagement and watch time are key. The algorithm closely watches how viewers interact – did they watch the whole video, replay it, like, comment, or share? High completion rates and robust engagement signal quality content and earn more distribution. TikTok’s algorithm is essentially a feedback loop: when a video quickly gets strong engagement from a test audience, the system shows it to even more people, creating the potential for exponential reach. Content that sparks interest early (remember the first seconds rule) and resonates emotionally tends to ride this wave.
For marketers, leveraging these insights means optimizing content for algorithmic preferences. This includes using trending sounds/hashtags, posting at times when your audience is active, and experimenting with different content styles to see what “triggers” the algorithm.
TikTok’s guidance suggests a “responsive” content strategy – be ready to pivot and tap into emerging trends rather than sticking to a fixed schedule. Also, TikTok’s algorithm doesn’t require you to have a large follower base to get views; even brand-new accounts can go viral with the right content. This levels the playing field – but it also raises the bar for creativity.
In 2025, brands are investing in social listening and trend-spotting to feed the content creation process. The goal is to make videos that feel native to TikTok’s culture, thus pleasing the algorithm and unlocking that massive viral reach without relying solely on paid promotion.
As TikTok’s user base and content consumption have boomed, its paid advertising platform has also rapidly matured. Brands are now pouring significant ad budgets into TikTok – over 50% of marketers allocate more than half of their social ad budget to TikTok alone. This investment is fueled by TikTok’s strong ROI potential and new ad features. In 2024 TikTok’s global ad revenue hit $23.6 billion, and it’s projected to climb to nearly $33+ billion in 2025, underscoring how quickly advertisers have embraced the platform.
So what are the trends in TikTok advertising in 2025? For one, TikTok offers more sophisticated targeting and analytics tools than ever. Advertisers can create custom audiences, retarget viewers who engaged with previous videos, and track conversions with the TikTok Pixel, much like on Facebook or Google.
The use of AI and machine learning for ad targeting is a notable trend – TikTok’s algorithmic engine helps optimize who sees your ads based on countless data points (interests, behaviors, past engagement). This means brands can serve highly relevant, personalized ads that feel almost like curated content to the user.
TikTok has also rolled out new ad formats tailored for engagement. For example, Spark Ads allow brands to boost existing organic TikTok posts (their own or a creator’s) as ads, blurring the line between paid and organic content. Collection Ads showcase multiple products in a swipeable carousel and have been shown to lower cost-per-acquisition by 41% compared to single-product ads.
And TikTok’s immersive full-screen video ads (In-Feed Ads, TopView, etc.) continue to see higher engagement than many traditional banner ads – video ads on TikTok have about 15% higher engagement rates than static ads on average.Over half of marketers surveyed dedicate 50% or more of their social ad budgets to TikTok, reflecting confidence in the platform’s ROI.
Another trend is the integration of e-commerce directly into ads. Brands can run shoppable ads that let users tap to view product details and purchase without leaving the app. Live Shopping Ads are emerging too, where live-streamed events are paired with in-stream purchase links to drive impulse buys. The focus for paid campaigns is not just eyeballs, but conversions.
In short, TikTok advertising in 2025 is all about smart targeting, creative formats, and seamless shopping integration, which collectively turn viral engagement into tangible results.
TikTok is synonymous with viral challenges – these are the communal trends where users film themselves doing a specific dance, prank, lip-sync or other theme, often tagged with a unifying hashtag. For marketers, branded hashtag challenges have become a go-to tactic for explosive reach and user participation. In 2025, this trend shows no sign of slowing.
Over 56% of brands report running hashtag challenge campaigns to spur user-generated content and buzz. When executed well, a TikTok challenge can spark thousands of fan-made videos and put a brand in the spotlight of TikTok culture.
The most successful challenges share a few key traits. They have a simple, catchy premise that anyone can try – ensuring low barriers to entry for mass participation. They encourage creative flexibility, so users can put their own spin on it and feel a sense of ownership. Often there’s a distinct visual or audio element (a signature dance move, a specific song or sound) that ties all the entries together and makes the trend recognizable.
And crucially, both influencers and everyday users get involved, creating a snowball effect of participation. TikTok’s algorithm tends to amplify these popular challenges, especially when big creators jump on board early.
However, marketers have learned that a challenge should also tie back to business goals. The newest trend is to build in conversion pathways subtly within challenges – for example, using a branded effect that features a product, or providing discount codes to participants. The key is to keep these promotions organic.
A challenge works best when it doesn’t feel like an ad, but rather a fun community activity that just happens to feature a brand theme. In summary, viral challenges remain a potent TikTok marketing tool in 2025, combining entertainment, social proof, and virality to elevate brand awareness in an authentic way.
One of the most transformative TikTok trends is the full integration of e-commerce into the platform. TikTok is no longer just for brand exposure – it’s becoming a one-stop shopping destination. The centerpiece of this is TikTok Shop, the in-app storefront feature that allows businesses to display products and users to purchase without ever leaving TikTok.
As of 2025, TikTok Shop has boomed in adoption: about 52% of marketers are already selling through TikTok Shop, with another 25% planning to start soon. TikTok now hosts more online stores than any other social platform, illustrating how deeply commerce is woven into the app’s fabric.
Over half of businesses are actively selling via TikTok Shop in 2025, while only about 10% are not interested – highlighting the platform’s rapid embrace of social commerce.
The appeal of TikTok’s e-commerce features lies in their seamlessness. Users can see a product in a video (perhaps worn by an influencer or demonstrated in a how-to), tap a link, and complete a purchase with an in-app checkout – all in a matter of seconds.
This one-click payment system is a game-changer. It removes friction from the buying process and capitalizes on the impulse nature of content discovery. TikTok’s Live Shopping is another trend to watch: brands and creators host live-streams where they showcase products, answer questions, and offer limited-time deals, with viewers able to buy in real time. Early data shows Live Shopping drives 22% higher conversion rates than standard product videos, likely due to the urgency and interactivity of the format.
Social commerce success on TikTok also goes hand-in-hand with influencer collaborations. Many brands enlist creators to host storefronts or share exclusive promo codes, effectively turning influencer videos into direct sales channels. In fact, TikTok-specific “creator collaborations” with purchase links have led to a 34% increase in product trial rates for some campaigns. The platform’s algorithm helps too – if a product video starts trending, TikTok will push it to more shoppers, creating a viral sales loop that traditional e-commerce can’t easily replicate.
All these developments position TikTok as a complete sales ecosystem in 2025. However, marketers are learning that simply listing products isn’t enough; success requires entertaining content merged with shopping. The most effective TikTok commerce strategies involve creative storytelling (to engage viewers) with a smooth purchasing option (to convert them).
For example, a beauty brand might post a funny makeover TikTok that also includes a link to buy the featured lipstick in-app. This blend of content and commerce is the future. With TikTok projected to drive $1+ trillion in social commerce sales globally by the late 2020s, integrating e-commerce into your TikTok marketing is no longer optional – it’s a must.
TikTok’s marketing landscape is fast-moving and dynamic. What worked a year ago might not catch fire today, as user preferences and platform features evolve. To stay ahead, brands should keep a pulse on TikTok’s latest trends and be ready to adapt their strategies.
The overarching theme of 2025’s TikTok trends is convergence: entertainment, community, and commerce are all blending on this platform. Influencer videos double as shopping ads; challenges drive both engagement and product sales; and algorithmic discovery means creative content can achieve paid-ad levels of reach.
Marketers that thrive on TikTok are those who embrace this new paradigm. It’s crucial to experiment with different content formats, from interactive polls to augmented reality filters, and measure what resonates. Keep content authentic and human, collaborate with influencers who genuinely align with your brand, and leverage TikTok’s tools (from analytics to ad targeting) to refine your approach.
TikTok rewards creativity and authenticity, so let your brand’s personality shine in a way that invites users to join in. By riding the wave of these trends, and keeping an eye on emerging ones, your brand can build a strong presence on TikTok and convert viral moments into lasting business success.
References:
Sprout Social: 28 TikTok statistics marketers need to know in 2025
Influencer MarketingHub: TikTok Marketing Report – Key Trends, Statistics, and Insights
Single Grain: Top TikTok Marketing Trends Reshaping Brands in 2025
Oberlo: TikTok Ad Revenue (2020–2027)
Admetrics: TikTok Advertising Trends Reshaping Digital Marketing in 2025
BindMedia: TikTok Ads statistics you need to know in 2024
AdExchanger: How TikTok Shop Is Redefining Social Commerce In The US
