TikTok is making a serious push into search advertising. The company is investing heavily in search ads and positioning itself as a strong competitor to Google, the long-standing leader in the space.

In a recent LinkedIn post, Nathan Barbagallo, TikTok’s Senior Product Strategy Lead, shared that the company is hiring a sales leader to spearhead its search ads business in New York.

The role comes with a base salary ranging from $146,700 to $256,500, according to the job description, and is expected to “shape the go-to-market strategy and drive adoption” of TikTok’s search ad products among enterprise brands.

There are currently 122 open roles globally tied to TikTok’s search advertising business, spanning sales, engineering, and product teams. It’s clear from the scale of hiring that search is no longer an experimental feature for TikTok. The platform is building out the infrastructure to compete for performance marketing budgets.

A year into search ads signals TikTok’s long-term commitment

Last year, TikTok rolled out ‘Search Ads Campaign,’ giving brands the ability to place keyword-targeted ads directly in the platform’s search results. The goal is to connect brands with users who are actively searching for products, ideas, or trends, similar to how marketers use Google Search.

Instead of just appearing in the For You feed, brands can now show up exactly when users are searching for related products. The platform said with the tool, marketers can choose keywords and control how their ads appear on TikTok’s search page. It turns a platform mostly known for entertainment and discovery into a place where people are actively seeking out content, services, or products.

User behavior is backing TikTok’s search ads effort 

According to TikTok, 57% of users engage with search, and nearly a quarter of them search within 30 seconds of opening the app. These numbers suggest that users are not just passively scrolling but actively looking for something, making them more likely to convert.

The short-form video platform is presenting this to advertisers as a new kind of search behavior—one that is more visual, more discovery-focused, and more integrated in user culture than traditional text-based engines.

Agencies are taking notice as search budgets shift

Platforms like TikTok, Instagram, and even Reddit are becoming discovery engines. Younger audiences in particular are using these platforms to search for products, ideas, or inspiration instead of turning to Google. Advertisers are noticing this shift and are already rethinking how and where they spend search budgets. 

According to Digiday, at least three agency executives said TikTok representatives have been actively pitching the search ad product to clients. The platform is being positioned as a fresh option for performance marketers to reach audiences in a different part of the funnel.

Aaron Goldman, CMO at Mediaocean, told Digiday, “People are re-examining their search budgets across the board, because search habits are changing and that’s actually benefiting TikTok.”

TikTok isn’t replacing Google yet, but it’s clearly playing the long game

The search ad push is still early for TikTok. Google remains the dominant player in search advertising; however, TikTok’s fast-growing footprint shows that advertisers are starting to consider other platforms for intent-based marketing.

The company is trying to reframe how brands think about intent-based advertising. Instead of only running search campaigns on Google or Bing, advertisers are now being asked to consider TikTok as a place where people are actively searching and where those searches might be more culturally relevant or more likely to lead to conversions.

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