TikTok has added an estimated $1.2 billion to the New Zealand economy over the past year and helped support close to 10,000 jobs, according to a new report by economic consultancy Infometrics.
The report, commissioned by TikTok and drawing on consumer research from Nielsen, surveyed 1000 adult weekly users of the platform alongside 700 business decision makers.
It found around 309,000 New Zealand businesses are now using TikTok at least monthly to promote themselves, while roughly 671,000 users say they spend money each month after seeing a product, service or place featured on the app.
Infometrics chief executive and principal economist Brad Olsen said the scale of business uptake stood out, particularly because companies did not need large followings or expensive production budgets to reach customers.
“You can put something up and once it goes viral, it spreads,” Olsen said.
A single video, filmed on a phone with no paid promotion behind it, can reach an audience that would otherwise take years of advertising spend to build.
Restaurant and cafe visits, cultural and sporting events, and trips to new destinations were among the most common categories of spending users linked back to something they saw on the app.
Just over half of TikTok users nationally, an estimated 671,000 people, reported buying something monthly as a direct result of content they encountered while scrolling.
Not everyone is convinced the figure tells the full story. Some economists have cautioned that the modelling assumes this spending would not have happened anyway if TikTok did not exist, and that a chunk of the $1.2 billion total is built on flow on effects such as supply chain activity and staff wages rather than money spent directly at the till.
Simplicity chief economist Shamubeel Eaqub said the findings should be treated cautiously. “I’d take it with a sack of salt.”
Questions have also been raised about how multinational platforms like TikTok are taxed on the money they generate from local users and businesses, an issue that has followed similar reports from other social platforms in recent years.
TikTok has moved from a platform associated mainly with entertainment to one increasingly woven into how local businesses find and convert customers, whether that is a cafe posting a video of its counter each morning or a tradie showing a finished job.
Whatever the true net contribution turns out to be, the report adds to a growing body of evidence that short form video has become a genuine sales channel.