TikTok’s hold on U.S. consumers is one the key findings from Meltwater’s Digital 2025 report for the U.S., which examines shifts and disruption of digital channel usage between September and November 2024. TikTok topped the report’s lists for greatest consumer spend, average time spent per user and average number of monthly sessions.
However, Threads, ChatGPT and Temu apps were downloaded more often than TikTok. And from a platform perspective, Facebook was the most-used and chosen most frequently as consumers’ favorite.
Still, “as a marketer, I would keep my eye on TikTok,” says Alexandra Bjertnaes, Chief Strategy Officer at Meltwater, especially given that its demographic mix seems to be changing.
TikTok’s Shifting Demo
For instance, although TikTok is often perceived as skewing young, adults 35-44 accounted for roughly the same percentage of users as those 18-24 years old (9.9% of females/11.1% of males for the older cohort, 10.8% of females/10.3% of males for the younger). In fact, those 25- to 34-years-old made up the plurality of its adult audience, accounting for 14.7% of male users and 14% of female users. And adults 55 and older made up a larger segment of the TikTok audience than 45-54-year-olds.
At the same time, Facebook does skew older than other social platforms. Males 18-24 made up only 5% of its users, with females 18-24 accounting for 5.4%. But among women, those aged 25-34 and 35-44 made up a higher portion of the audience (11.3% and 10.6% respectively) than women 65 and older (9.7%). What’s more, males over 65 accounted for only 6.2% of users, compared with 11.2% for men 25-34, 10% for men 35-44, and 7.6% for men 45-54.
“There’s a lot of crisscrossing going on,” Bjertnaes notes. “Digital channels and platforms will continue to shift.” She expects diversification and fragmentation among social and digital channels to increase, pointing to the surprise emergence and almost-immediate adoption of Threads last year as well as this year’s growth in the number of Bluesky users.
Where Consumers Turn for Product Research
Social networks such as Facebook and TikTok were the most popular social media for brand research. Of the 57.3% of adult Internet users who used social media to find information about products and services, just shy of a third (32.3%) turned to social networks. Q&A sites such as Quora were second most popular, with 18.1% using them, and forums and message boards third (12.6%).
Among all online channels, however, people turned to consumer reviews (41.8%) and product and brand websites (38.5%) more than they did social media. And topping them all were search engines: 60.4% of Internet users turning to them as a primary brand research source.
Show Me the Money
With this in mind, it’s not surprising that online search advertising accounted for the plurality of last year’s $317 billion in digital ad spend: $137 billion, or 43%. That’s an increase of $17.1 billion, or 14.3%, from 2023.
The increase in search ad spend outpaced that of total digital ad spend, which grew a still-significant 11.6%, or $32.9 billion, last year. In comparison, total ad spend, online and off, increased a more modest 7.8% in 2024, to $426 billion—and offline ad spend actually declined nearly 2%, to $109 billion.
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