Yikai Li, Ex-ByteDance, on TikTok Bans, Livestreaming, and Influencer Marketing in China

It’s never a quiet news day for TikTok at the moment. It seems every day there’s either a new exciting update for the platform, or it has been challenged, or even banned, somewhere in the world.

Only two weeks ago, we took a deep dive into one of the most hectic weeks in TikTok history. The platform released a number of new updates for creators, whilst also being banned in Montana, which became the first US state to do so.

Whether you’re a fan of the platform or not, you can’t deny its influence on society; TikTok now has 150 million monthly active users in the US. If you think that’s an impressive number, China’s version of TikTok, Douyin, has 600 million active daily users — a number that experts project will pass 835 million by 2025.

Yikai Li, General Manager at Nativex Europe and North America, and previous Head of Client Solution for Israel and Sales Director for South East Asia at ByteDance, saw first-hand TikTok’s rapid international growth when he started working at ByteDance in China in 2018.

Li sat down with Hello Partner to share his thoughts on the evolving user behavior shaping the future of marketing and advertising on TikTok.

What works for Douyin, works for TikTok

Joining the ByteDance team in the very early days of 2018, Li was one of the original team members at the company. Starting his work in the Chinese and wider-Asian Markets, Li helped to launch ad products in the South East Asian (SEA) markets, as well as launching the Israeli market.