Love TikTok but hate ads? You’re not alone. An ad-free world is one we all crave but rarely get, until now. The developers of the incredibly popular app are testing out a new ad-free offering. Unfortunately, it’s not monetarily free – the subscription will cost 4.99. Small price to pay?
Some users in the U.S. are getting messages that they can sign up for an ad-free payment tier. Users get two choices, the “Standard” plan, which lets people “Enjoy TikTok for free with ads. Ads shown will be personalized based on your activity on TikTok. We also use data from third parties, but only if you’ve enabled tracking on your device.”
The “Ad-free” description is much more succinct. It simply says “Enjoy an ad-free experience on TikTok.” Android Authority recently provided a screenshot of what the options look like.
TikTok has yet to announce the plan publicly, so we don’t know exactly how many people are seeing the message about the pricing tier. Of course, we don’t know whether this tier will stay in the $4.99 price range or not.
TikTok, like many other social apps, is trying to open up more avenues for revenue. Per The Verge, the app moved its shopping platform TikTok Shop to its main navigation bar for some of its users.
The company also regularly offers coupons for people who want to boost their videos. Twitter, or X, also has premium subscription service that provides “approximately 50 percent fewer ads.” There are also reports that Meta may also do an ad-free version of Instagram and Facebook to help mitigate the European Union’s concerns about data privacy.
News site TechCrunch confirmed with TikTok that it’s “testing this product but only in a single, English-speaking market outside the U.S. It disputed the Android Authority report that said it was coming to the U.S. as small-scale tests don’t indicate a product launch is inevitable.”
The incredibly popular app launched in 2016 and is not the fastest growing app in the country. As of February of this year, TikTok gets about 1.8 billion users a month.
Just last year, the app saw 672 million downloads. As for spending in Q4 of last year? We’re looking at $6 billion.
Of all the users around the world, about 122 million are in the United States. The app is currently valued at around $75 billion and its revenue for 2022 came in at $11.65 billion. It’s only going to get bigger. Time will tell if the ad-free option becomes a regular thing.