The Actual Audience
TikTok’s core Australian audience is 18–24. As of December 2025, under-16s are excluded by law — all planning should operate on an 18+ basis.
The 10.9 million reach figure reflects that adjusted addressable audience.
Time Spent
TikTok users spend more time per session on the platform than on any other social app in Australia.
That attention is real, but contextual. Users are in passive consumption mode, not purchase mode. The platform rewards content that earns attention rather than interrupts it.
Creative Volatility
TikTok performance is more sensitive to creative quality than any other platform.
An ad that works this week may be invisible next week. Trend alignment, audio selection, pacing and authentic presentation all affect distribution. This makes TikTok expensive to maintain well — it requires a continuous creative pipeline, not a set-and-forget approach.
The Age Range Is Expanding
While 18–24 remains the core, the 25–34 segment is growing. Millennials who initially resisted TikTok are now regular users.
For brands whose products appeal across the 18–34 range, TikTok’s audience is more commercially useful than its youth-skewing reputation suggests.
The Right Objective
Use TikTok for awareness and discovery, not direct conversion.
It builds familiarity at scale quickly. When run alongside a Facebook retargeting strategy, it can compress consideration timelines — but expecting TikTok alone to close sales consistently will disappoint.
How ROI Helps Businesses Win on TikTok
ROI approaches TikTok as part of a connected platform strategy, not a standalone channel.
Before committing budget, ROI helps businesses assess whether TikTok is genuinely right for their audience and margin profile — because for some categories, it simply isn’t. Where it fits, ROI builds the creative framework needed to sustain performance: content that looks native rather than produced, and campaign structures that feed TikTok-generated awareness into higher-intent retargeting on Facebook and Instagram. For brands competing for the 18–34 audience in Australia, this multi-platform approach consistently outperforms single-channel investment — and builds the kind of market share that compounds over time.
