Can Triller beat Tik Tok?

Darren Low posted on 30 November 2020

While TikTok struggles, there is a new player in the form of Triller. Can it beat TikTok? And what is it anyway?

Short-from video app TikTok is notorious. It has had recent run-ins with the US government, and has also found itself banned in India (which is an incredibly large market for social media). Things are not looking good for TikTok. However, it is not out of the game yet, and is still popular, with two billion downloads meaning users are still well and truly in love with the platform.

With popularity comes competition. TikTok has seen a contender in Reels recently, but it remains to be seen just how aggressive that app will be. Another worthy opponent comes in the shape of Triller. 

What is Triller?

Triller was first unleashed on the world way back in 2015. This makes it older than TikTok. Users simply film a number of ‘takes’ of themselves singing and dancing along to the large library of songs that Triller has. Then, Triller puts these takes together in the form of a music video. 

Triller claims that it uses artificial intelligence to put together the clips. Most strikingly (and this is one of the key differences between TikTok and Triller), users can use whole songs for their videos, rather than short clips like they do on TikTok. And to add even more value here, Triller users can use songs from their own Apple Music or Spotify app libraries. Triller claims to have rights to use 98% of the world’s available music.

While TikTok uses AI just like Triller does, there is a fundamental difference in how AI is used. With TikTok, the AI is used to serve up interesting content. Triller uses AI to edit the videos that users work to create. 

It’s also important to remember another crucial difference. Triller does the editing of the videos for the user. TikTok places the job of editing (or at least some of it) in the hands of the user.

With that huge music library and the attached rights, Triller also makes money for the music artists, so the platform is a win for the music industry too.

Triller’s secret weapon for brands

Triller has recently worked very hard to attract some of the most prominent Influencers to the platform. The strategy has paid off, with the D’ Amelio family and the Sway Boys being two particularly impressive Influencer names that have moved across to Triller. 

However, Triller has also managed to pull off something quite innovative at the same time. It has set up an Influencer service, whereby brands can buy Influencer support on Triller, with a ‘guaranteed views’ element. This is remarkable, because it has effectively made Influencer marketing as reliable and as measurable as simpel paid ads. With guaranteed views, brands can now simply pay for Influencers on Triller, and enjoy guaranteed exposure for their money. 

The new service is called Crosshype. It allows for the CPM model of advertising, where exposure is bought in units. This is where the guaranteed views come into play. The Chief Growth Officer at Triller, Bonin Bough, offered their thoughts in a recent press release about the new platform:

“With millions of dollars going into influencer marketing, the industry deserves to have a platform that allows them to continually shift dollars from all aspects of the marketing plan including media. Influencers and creators are our life blood and we want to make sure more brands can participate at greater scale with these authentic creators.”

So what next?

While Triller is older than TikTok (and some might wonder why it has taken so long to bubble up to the surface) it has the huge music catalogue and the full music video capability. However, the one thing that may make it even more viable for brands, and give it longevity, is Crosshype. It’s early days, but if Crosshype takes off, there will be precious few reasons to spend marketing money on TikTok. Nothing gets marketers more excited than guaranteed exposure. And we think that key difference makes Triller (assuming it actually delivers) a TikTok beater. 

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