As Google faces antitrust search scrutiny, at the same time, there are other players emerging as search challengers.
Gen AI startup Perplexity is increasingly seen as a direct threat to Google’s search dominance. Additionally, other Big Tech platforms are quietly becoming search powerhouses. Martech company SOCi released data last year showing that young people increasingly rely on Instagram and TikTok for business searches.
TikTok, in particular, has become a YouTube-like competitor focusing on short-form video. Users are turning to it for more snackable reviews, DIY, and product-related videos. Recognizing this trend, TikTok has taken interesting steps in search over the last year to support content discoverability.
One of the most notable is the introduction of AI-generated search summaries called “AI Search Highlights,” powered by an integration with ChatGPT. They also quietly introduced “Search Highlights,” where it’s unclear if these are AI-generated in the same way, though a safe assumption is that they are. Here’s an example:
Here’s what The Verge reported about Search Highlights a few months ago: “Those, too, show up at the top of search results, but it’s not clear where that information is coming from, like whether it’s summarizing videos or taken from someplace else.”
Why This Matters:
Now, here’s where the adtech piece of this comes into play – as TikTok becomes a search platform, how will it work with brands to manage their visibility in these results? TikTok is a growing driver of online and offline sales, with 1 in 3 users buying a product because they saw it on the platform, according to the company.
Tied to that, TikTok has a growing search ads business. Last October, the company launched Search Ads Toggle, a feature that extends in-feed advertising to TikTok’s search results page. This allows advertisers to reach users searching for terms related to their products or services. Unlike traditional keyword-based search advertising, where advertisers bid on specific keywords to trigger their ads, TikTok’s system automatically matches the content and context of an advertiser’s in-feed video ad to relevant search queries. This means advertisers don’t need to create separate search ad campaigns or manage keyword lists. Instead, their existing video content is repurposed and displayed as “Sponsored” content in the search results, providing an additional touchpoint with their audience.
TikTok is even making the Search Ads Toggle default on when setting up new campaigns. Though it’s not guaranteed that enabling the Search Ads Toggle will result in your ads being delivered within the TikTok search results page, as there are a number of different factors – such as ad relevance to the search query, metadata, budgets, competition, etc. – which impact if an ad is displayed or not.
This brings me back to Search Highlights. In testing several searches that provided Search Highlights, there was no clear Sponsored promotion alongside those query responses. Instead, when asked, for example, “what are the best hotels in Las Vegas,” TikTok responded directly with a Search Highlight. Similarly, when asked about “best coffee machines,” the Search Highlight read “the Breville machine gives you coffee that’s 10 times better than you’d get from Starbucks.” This approach by TikTok’s AI-generated “Search Highlights” is steering consumer choices by directly recommending brands (like Breville) over others (like Starbucks). See other examples below.
Given how product-centric and how much people use TikTok for business recommendations, it is somewhat surprising to see TikTok not 1) avoid delivering a clear response to product and brand questions saying that one is the best versus another; and 2) that there is no sponsorship opportunity to truly own these types of searches.
Experts React:
Damian Rollison, director of market insights at SOCi, says, “The old guard of search engines is being challenged as younger shoppers turn to Instagram and TikTok for search and discovery. For businesses, a robust presence on these platforms isn’t just beneficial – it’s critical to winning market share with younger consumers.”
Our Take:
As TikTok continues to evolve its search capabilities and search advertising technology, it will be interesting to see if any of this changes. At the very least, we might see fewer direct responses to brand/product queries in the new Search Highlights feature. Long-term, more opportunities for brands to own these searches are likely.
