In recent years, a new trend has emerged of companies paying people to watch videos on the popular social media app TikTok. One company making headlines is Ubiquitous, an influencer marketing agency that announced it would pay three people $100 per hour to watch TikTok videos for 10 hours (https://www.livemint.com/news/world/ubiquitous-will-pay-100-per-hour-to-watch-tiktok-content-for-10-hours-11684636248696.html). This has sparked interest in the concept of getting paid just to view content on the video-sharing platform.
Ubiquitous is not the only company jumping on this trend. Other firms are also looking to pay TikTok users to watch videos and engage with content. This serves several purposes – it can help boost viewer numbers and engagement for TikTok creators, provide marketing data and analytics, and even assist in identifying trends and influencers on the platform.
In this article, we’ll examine the phenomenon of companies paying for TikTok viewing in more depth. We’ll look at the different businesses engaged in this practice, their motivations, how users can get paid, issues around inorganic TikTok growth, and what this could mean for the future of the app and influencer marketing.
App Review Network
An app review network is a company that pays app developers to promote and boost their apps through reviews, ratings, and downloads on app stores like Google Play and the Apple App Store. This is done by recruiting freelancers and influencers to download, use, rate, and review apps in exchange for monetary rewards.
One example is PayForTikTok.com, a website that claims to pay users $100 to watch 100 TikTok videos, like videos, follow users, and make comments. The company positions itself as a TikTok marketing service to help brands, influencers, and creators gain more views, followers, shares, and engagement on their TikTok content.
While services like PayForTikTok claim to help TikTok users organically grow their audience, they essentially pay people to artificially inflate TikTok engagement metrics through likes, comments, follows, and video views. This goes against TikTok’s terms of service.
Sources:
https://www.quora.com/Are-the-reviews-and-ratings-of-apps-in-the-Google-Play-Store-legit-or-a-scam
TikTok Influencers
Some TikTok influencers with large followings pay viewers to watch their videos in order to increase engagement and views. This helps them get more traction on the platform and qualify for various TikTok monetization programs
According to a study by the London Business School [1], around 12% of TikTok influencers admit to paying for views at some point. Services exist where influencers can pay as little as $2 per 1,000 video views or $5 per 10,000 views.
While against TikTok’s terms of service, this practice allows influencers to boost their profile, get more followers, and potentially get accepted into prestigious programs like the TikTok Creator Fund. However, experts warn that buying views is not a sustainable growth strategy and makes it harder to engage real fans.
Engagement Pods
Engagement pods are groups of TikTok creators who collaborate to watch each other’s videos in order to increase engagement metrics like views, likes, and comments. By coordinating efforts, members of an engagement pod can quickly amass high engagement numbers on their videos through reciprocal support [1].
Creators form engagement pods by connecting through forums like Reddit or Telegram groups. Members agree to watch and engage with a certain number of each others’ new videos per day or week. This requires a significant time commitment, but participants hope the high engagement metrics will increase their discoverability on TikTok’s algorithm [2].
While not directly prohibited, TikTok does not recommend engagement pods as they undermine authentic user engagement. There are also risks if groups employ comment spam or artificial inflation of likes. Still, many creators participate in pods as a growth strategy in TikTok’s competitive platform.
TikTok Analytics Firms
There are now entire firms dedicated to analyzing TikTok data and providing analytics. Companies like HypeAuditor offer in-depth analytics of TikTok profiles and posts to help brands and influencers optimize their strategies on the platform.
These analytics firms track metrics like audience demographics, engagement rates, video views, follower growth, and more. They use this data to benchmark performance and provide comparisons to competitors. Some analytics firms also offer predictive analysis to estimate future growth and engagement.
For marketers, these TikTok analytics tools provide valuable insights to guide content creation, influencer partnerships, and ad targeting. The depth of data available from specialty firms goes far beyond TikTok’s built-in analytics. Their dashboards and custom reports help brands maximize their investment in TikTok marketing.
TikTok Advertising
Brands and businesses have embraced TikTok advertising as a way to promote their products and services to TikTok’s large userbase. TikTok allows companies to pay to promote videos, images, and other content as ads that appear in users’ feeds.
TikTok has an official advertising platform called TikTok Ads Manager where businesses can set up and manage their ad campaigns. Brands can target their ads using demographic factors like age, gender, and location. They can also target based on users’ interests and behaviors on TikTok.
The cost of TikTok advertising varies based on factors like target audience and length of campaign. Prices tend to be lower than platforms like Facebook and Instagram. According to TikTok, the average cost per click in the US is around $0.10 – $0.30. Brands typically allocate a portion of their digital marketing budget to experiment with TikTok ads.
Early adopters have seen success, especially those targeting younger audiences. For example, Chipotle drove a 4% increase in sales through a TikTok hashtag challenge campaign in 2019. As more brands start TikTok advertising, it will be interesting to see the impact on costs and competition for ad inventory.
Issues with Paid TikTok Viewing
There are significant issues that arise from using paid services to increase views and engagement on TikTok. The main problems are that it often violates TikTok’s policies and results in inauthentic engagement.
TikTok’s Community Guidelines strictly prohibit “artificially inflating popularity or engagement numbers.” This includes using any third-party services or apps to increase likes, comments, shares, followers, etc. TikTok considers this to be fraudulent activity that undermines the integrity of the platform. Accounts caught engaging in this behavior may be permanently banned (source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Tiktokhelp/comments/1462py0/is_paying_to_promote_your_video_an_awful_decision/).
Many services that offer paid TikTok views, likes, shares, etc. rely on fake accounts and bots to deliver the engagement. This means creators are essentially paying for inauthentic interactions from users who have no genuine interest in their content. The engagement metrics become meaningless and inflated. Even worse, it can look suspicious to TikTok’s algorithms and lead to videos being demoted or hidden in recommendations (source: https://support.tiktok.com/en/using-tiktok/growing-your-audience/my-videos-arent-getting-views).
In summary, buying engagement on TikTok violates policies, delivers fake metrics, and can sabotage accounts. Authenticity is key, so creators should focus on making captivating content that connects with real audiences.
TikTok’s Response
TikTok has taken steps to crack down on inorganic engagement practices on the platform. In a statement in January 2023, TikTok said they were “committed to promoting a safe and authentic experience on TikTok” (https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/tiktoks-approach-to-authenticity). They outlined actions taken against accounts engaged in inorganic growth tactics, including banning accounts and removing inauthentic engagement from videos.
Specifically, TikTok uses technology and moderation teams to detect and remove fake views, likes and comments. If accounts are found to be using third-party services or engagement groups to inflate popularity, they face permanent suspension. TikTok also removes any inauthentic activity from creators’ videos, to prevent artificial inflation of performance metrics.
In addition, TikTok has introduced policies prohibiting paid promotions disguised as organic content, and disclosing brand relationships in paid partnerships. This aims to improve transparency around influencer marketing on the platform (https://newsroom.tiktok.com/en-us/updates-to-tiktoks-branded-content-policy).
While the practice of buying TikTok views persists, the company claims to be continually improving processes to identify and stop inorganic growth hacking. Maintaining an authentic user experience is said to be a priority for TikTok amidst its massive growth.
The Future of Paid TikTok Views
The practice of buying views and engagement on TikTok will likely continue despite the platform’s efforts to stop it. As TikTok has grown into one of the most popular social media platforms, the incentives for influencers, brands, and other users to artificially inflate engagement metrics have also increased. However, TikTok has implemented measures aimed at detecting and filtering out inauthentic activity, including bots and purchased views/likes. Their detection systems leverage AI and machine learning to analyze factors like watch time, device info, account history, and more to identify suspicious patterns.[1]
Still, services selling TikTok engagement persist by adapting to stay under the radar. They promote “high-retention” views from real accounts to better evade detection. While TikTok will likely continue working to improve detection, completely eliminating artificial engagement may prove challenging. As long as incentives around vanity metrics like views exist, a subset of users will likely take shortcuts, albeit increasingly risky ones.
In the long run, a potential shift away from simplistic metrics like view counts could reduce the perceived need to buy engagement. Rather than raw view numbers, TikTok may emphasize longer watch times, meaningful comments, shares, etc. as signs of true user interest. Paid activities like advertising and influencer marketing will likely still play a major role in the future – albeit with more focus on genuine engagement versus superficial vanity metrics.
Conclusion
In summary, some companies and influencers are paying for fake views and engagement on TikTok in order to increase their perceived popularity and make money. This is often done through view farms, engagement pods, and analytics firms that specialize in gaming TikTok’s algorithm. While providing the illusion of viral content and popularity, these paid and artificial views undermine the authenticity of the platform. TikTok has tried to crack down on fake views, but people find new ways to game the system.
The issue highlights the arms race for attention online and how platforms, influencers, and marketers try to manipulate metrics. As TikTok continues to grow, the company will need to balance keeping the platform authentic while allowing creators to monetize their content. More transparency, vetting of accounts, and emphasis on genuine engagement may help. But for now, viewers should be aware that not everything they see on TikTok reflects true popularity. The significance is that paid TikTok views distort perceptions and undermine trust in creators.
