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Comment by dylz | Hacker News Reader

TikTok has some of the worst misleading and bizarre advertisements all over the internet. I'm kind of curious what their advertising budget is at this point.

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Chinese funded, so essentially infinite

What’s misleading? I’ve seen a metric buttload of their ads on YouTube but I know basically nothing about it beyond that.

Heavy sexualization in ads (for an app targetted 13-17 demographic, not to mention the amount of predator behaviour in Musically pre-merge/acquisition in general) vaguely reminiscent of the "play now, my lord" times, fake X-out/buttons, incessant screaming/volume differences, abuse-esque ads (child voice begging for help + black eyes, etc)

The ads contain content that would get YouTube uploaders demonetised and suspended.

Ever since it popped up on my radar I've had that same associated with shady, scumbag marketing. I can't believe it's taking off, ffs...

I think that "taking off" is relative. We don't really know how much they are spending on ads at the moment to get all these installs, but I can tell you it's A LOT of money. This is not organic growth, and generally paying your way to the top doesn't work long-term.

Strangely, I've never seen Tik Tok ads, care to show me what they look like.

>Heavy sexualization in ads (for an app targetted 13-17 demographic

You should see the Snapchat discover tab (or whatever it's called). It's simply vile.

Do you means the adds for the app seen elsewhere are strange, or that the adds you see in their app are weird?

ads not adds.

I'd bet the majority of the money was spent on recruiting the e-celebs to the platform.

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