ByteDance to generate over $27b in ad revenue this year, sources say

Douyin, TikTok’s Chinese version, yields almost 60% of the ad revenue. Its news and information content platform Jinri Toutiao contributes 20% while its video platform Xigua brings in under 3%. TikTok, however, contributes little to it, according to one of the sources.

For the first half of last year, ByteDance raked in US$7.6 billion in ad revenue, which was 23% of the total digital ad spend in the country. It became the second-largest digital ad player in China after the Alibaba Group, which recorded US$10.9 billion from its ad unit, the report said.

According to the source, the tech giant is looking to invest in three businesses next year: ecommerce, search, and longer-form videos.

ByteDance’s ecommerce platform is expected to reach around 150 billion yuan (US$22.7 billion) in gross merchandise value this year. For the search part, it launched Toutiao Search last August to compete with Baidu, which currently dominates the market. ByteDance also plans to invest 10 billion yuan (US$1.5 billion) in Xigua and aims to increase the number of daily active users to over 100 million.

Earlier this month, it was reported that ByteDance was in talks to raise US$2 billion in a funding round, which will give it a valuation of US$180 billion.

Currency converted from Chinese yuan to US dollar: US$1 = 6.62 yuan.