Tiktok doubles its revenue in Australia
Tiktok Australia has almost doubled its profits, and tripled its revenue during a massive twelve-month growth period in the country.
However, the company’s fortunes are set to be challenged as it faces the looming ban for under-16s and potentially falls within an an expanded news bargaining incentive that may force it to pay news companies.
According to ASIC filings, TikTok Australia made $679 million in the year to December 31, compared to $375.2 million in 2023.
$474.3 million of this came directly from advertisers, with the remainder simply filed under “services”.
The company made $31.2 million in profits, a huge leap from the $11.4 million it cleared in 2023. It’s biggest local expenditure was online advertising spend, for which the company paid $341.7 million. Tiktok paid $11.1 million in income tax in Australia.
There are challenges ahead.
The Albanese government has introduced legislation that will ban Tiktok and various other social media services to all users under 16. The law is set to take effect in December.
The company has vocally opposed the ban, especially the expected exemption to be given to Youtube, which Tiktok called “illogical, anti-competitive, and short-sighted”, and likened to banning all soft drinks to minors aside from Coca-Cola.
It said the government favouring Youtube over similar video services is “irrational and indefensible”, and argues “the Government has begun its analysis from the starting position that YouTube must be exempt and then attempted, half-heartedly, to reverse-engineer defensible supporting evidence.”
In addition, Tiktok may fall under the planned news bargaining incentive — an extension of the News Media Bargaining Code — that forces large digital platforms to do deals with news providers or face a levy. The incentive, which has not yet been legislated, applies to “significant social media or search services” that “exceed an annual threshold of $250 million gross revenue attributable to Australian markets.”
Tiktok, as its ASIC filings show, now ticks both these boxes.
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It’s YouTube* and TikTok*
Thanks for your comment. Mumbrella house style has recently been changed – we now remove mid-sentence capitalisations and special characters except where removing them would make it more difficult to recognise the name. That is not the case with Youtube or Tiktok.