TikTok Is Becoming a Core Marketing Channel — Not Just a Social App
TikTok, once known purely for bite-sized content and entertainment, has evolved into a place people go to discover brands, learn what’s trending, and make decisions. With over 1 billion monthly active users globally and 200 million in the U.S.1, it’s become where someone might first hear about a product, look up a service, or decide who to hire.2 And it’s not just reach that matters. 92% of users take action after watching a short-form video on TikTok3.
At this point, every business has at least talked about TikTok. The challenge is that while almost everyone can see how valuable TikTok can be for large brands, mid-sized and regional brands have struggled to run it consistently and effectively, limiting the potential impact on leads and revenue. TikTok has felt like something to test. Something to experiment with. Something that could work, but is hard to prioritize and operationalize alongside everything else.
That’s why TikTok’s Channel Sales Partner Program matters. TikTok is integrating itself into the marketing platforms that brands already leverage, so that campaigns can be planned, managed, and measured without becoming another separate project.
From stand-alone platform to embedded product
Businesses are already managing a lot: Google Ads, Meta, websites, reviews, reporting, lead tracking, and follow-up. If TikTok sits in a separate platform with separate reporting and separate decisions, it becomes easier to deprioritize, making it harder to capture the performance benefits TikTok and short-form video can deliver.
The Channel Sales Partner Program shifts the setup. Through API-driven integrations with marketing platforms that brands already use, TikTok gets pulled into the same place where they already manage their marketing efforts. That’s what moves short-form video from “interesting” to something they can actually run and see results from.
The real barrier for is bandwidth
It’s not that brand locations aren’t interested in short-form video. The challenge is time and complexity. Running TikTok campaigns effectively requires testing, iteration, and platform knowledge that many owners don’t have in-house. Even a business that sees the potential may not have the bandwidth to manage one more specialized tool.
When TikTok shows up inside the platforms brands already use, the day-to-day gets a lot simpler. Brands can manage TikTok campaigns inside existing workflows, without needing a dedicated TikTok team. That’s where TikTok starts to feel less like a side project and more like a channel you can keep running.
TikTok is pushing short-form video deeper into performance marketing
TikTok is great at getting people interested fast. What has been harder is connecting that creative performance to outcomes, especially when TikTok activity is separated from the rest of their marketing stack.
With TikTok running inside a broader marketing platform, short-form video starts to play more like a real performance channel, not just an awareness play. Businesses can connect what happens on TikTok to the outcomes that matter: lead volume, conversion, and most importantly, revenue.
As Ashlie Kim, SVP of Advertising at Scorpion, put it: “Most businesses don’t need another platform to learn. They need TikTok to show up inside the tools they already use, so it’s actually something they can run day to day.”
Why partners matter in this model
TikTok can build the best tools in the world, but adoption still comes down to whether a business can actually run this channel alongside everything else it’s already doing.
That’s where the Channel Sales Partner Program come in. The right partners already sit in the middle of local marketing. They help thousands of local businesses manage search and paid social, improve website performance, track leads, and understand what’s working. Adding TikTok into that same workflow makes it easier to launch, test, and optimize without treating it like a separate project.
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And partners bring consistency. They provide the guardrails, the reporting, and the day-to-day support that businesses rely on. That structure is what turns TikTok into a channel that can be sustained, not just tried.
For TikTok, the benefit is scale. Instead of trying to build one-on-one relationships with every local presence, TikTok can grow through platforms and partners that already serve thousands of businesses and know how to drive performance across key categories. The result is fewer moving parts and fewer disconnected tools.
What this signals for the market
TikTok’s Channel Sales Partner Program also says something bigger about how ad platforms win their next phase of growth.
Most platforms start the same: build the audience, launch the ads product, and assume businesses will find a way to make it work. That’s fine for big teams, but most brands don’t operate like that. If a channel doesn’t fit into the same workflow as everything else, it’s hard to keep it going.
Brand locations stick with the channels that fit into the way they already work. They show up inside existing workflows, they plug into reporting and optimization, and they make it easier to connect spend to outcomes.
TikTok is moving from “nice to have” to “part of the plan.” For businesses, that’s the part worth paying attention to. TikTok has always been powerful. Now with the Channel Sales Partner Program, it’s getting easier to run.
Meet author Kirby Oscar (Scorpion) , as he takes the stage April 20&21 in Houston, for Localogy’s L26 along with speakers from companies like TikTok, Nextdoor, Amazon, EW Scripps and CLIO.
Sources:
TikTok Internal Data, Global, February 2026¹
TikTok Internal Data, January 20242
TikTok Marketing Science Global Community and Self-Expression Study 2021 conducted by Flamingo3
