Why TikTok’s revenue model
is so successful in 2025

Australia vs Asia: one app, two very different playbooks

Open TikTok for a single minute and you’ll glimpse the future of media, retail and advertising in one dopamine-fuelled scroll. More than one billion people now swipe through karaoke memes, K-beauty hacks and comedy duets every month, yet the real magic happens off-screen: a six-cylinder revenue engine expected to crank out US$33 billion in 2025.

The big idea? TikTok welds short-form video, AI personalisation and one-tap checkout into a friction-free loop that sells ads like Google, moves stock like Amazon and shapes culture like Netflix—all without asking users to leave the feed. But the way those cylinders fire in Australia versus Asia couldn’t be more different, and brands that ignore the nuance could risk paying 2020 prices for 2010 results.

TikTok’s six cylinders at a glance

1 | The power of AI-enhanced advertising

TikTok's cash engine roars loudest through advertising, and it's easy to see why. Skippable in-feed clips, branded hashtag challenges and TopView takeovers together pumped out roughly US$14 billion in 2024 (about 77% of the platform's revenue) and analysts tip the tally to double by the end of 2025.

In Australia, some 350,000 brands already jostle for Gen Z's meme-powered attention, while media buyers prove they can add another 58% of incremental reach simply by pairing Spark Ads with the same spots they run on linear TV.

Across Asia, the scale is mind-bending: Indonesia alone logs more than 125 million monthly users and advertisers lean heavily on TikTok's Smart+ AI to slice customer acquisition costs into the single digits.

Cross-border K-pop launches in Thailand and Vietnam now roll out in days, not months, because the machine is doing the localisation grunt work for them.

2 | TikTok Shop: the e-commerce turbocharger

If ads are the rocket fuel, TikTok Shop is the turbocharger. Australians only gained native checkout in early 2025, but micro-creators with five-digit followings are already notching AU$10,000 weeks by turning makeup hauls and #BookTok reviews into instant purchases.

Expect the real fireworks once affiliate links and GMV Max catalogue syncing go mainstream before Christmas. Over the Java Sea, meanwhile, livestream commerce is practically a national sport: Jakarta beauty hosts routinely pull in half their monthly revenue by chatting to viewers after dinner, and regional mega-sale nights like Singles' Day dwarf anything traditional TV shopping has ever managed.

3 | Creators: influence at industrial scale

Behind every viral hit is a creator collaboration, and the numbers here are just as punchy. PepsiCo's Twisties duet challenge in Australia spiked sales double-digits in under seven days, while Mountain Dew's footy-meme blitz chalked up five million impressions on a budget smaller than the average TVC storyboard.

In Asia, Korean beauty giants hire Thai and Vietnamese influencers overnight, and collab houses in Seoul and Jakarta churn out 30-plus branded clips a day. The secret sauce: TikTok's recommendation engine surfaces branded content to people before they even follow the creator, turning nano-influencers into reach multipliers at breakneck speed.

4 | AI: the quiet driving force

None of this happens without AI quietly driving. Smart+ autobuilds thousands of ad variants, Symphony writes scripts on the fly and GMV Max optimises bids at a product-catalogue level.

Ray-Ban's Australian team slashed acquisition costs 50% and lifted conversions 47% after a single Smart+ test, while big Asian travel and fintech brands now run upwards of 10,000 creative permutations a week.

Real-time language switching means a Thai ad can morph into Bahasa Indonesian before supper, letting regional marketers iterate faster than their legal teams can file the new contracts.

5 | TikTok's marriage to traditional media

TikTok's marriage to traditional media is the newest—and flashiest—cylinder. On 18 June 2025, Binge loop-streamed the entire first episode of Billion Dollar Playground on TikTok Live for 24 hours, marking the first time an Aussie streamer debuted long-form content on the platform.

Families are casting TikTok to smart TVs, while Nielsen data shows 58% of those impressions come from viewers who never caught the same ad on linear TV.

Asia is already living in this future: Korean dramas tease exclusive character clips in the feed, then funnel fans straight to premium VOD, and Saudi media conglomerate SRMG now embeds TikTok creators into flagship sports shows.

6 | Virtual gifting: the tip-jar economy

In Australia, it's still a lucrative side hustle: one Melbourne gamer pockets about AU$2000 a month in roses, rockets and digital universes, repurposing the cash to fund new content and merch drops.

In Southeast Asia, gifting is life.

Fashion streamers in Vietnam routinely swap high-value gifts for instant discount codes mid-show, effectively blending QVC, Twitch and Shopify into a single dopamine-rich loop. It's frictionless generosity with a credit-card trail, and TikTok, of course, skims its commission straight off the top.

Regulation & risk at a glance

What’s next for TikTok?