TikTok on a Vizio TV. | Image: Vizio
Vizio has become the latest smart TV manufacturer to get a TikTok app, allowing owners to watch the short-form focused video platform on the big screen. It’s just the latest manufacturer to add TikTok to its TV platform, after the app came to Samsung and LG’s TVs, Android TV, and Amazon’s Fire TV platforms last year. Vizio says you’ll be able to browse TikTok’s Discover feed, or link an account to watch video content from the For You and Following feeds.
The apps are arriving as TikTok is allowing users to upload longer and longer videos to its historically short-form service. In February, TikTok expanded its maximum video length to 10 minutes, at which point it probably makes sense to watch it on the big screen. That said, TikTok’s videos are still formatted for portrait viewing, which leads to a lot of empty screen real-estate on standard 16:9 aspect ratio TVs (Samsung’s gimmicky rotating TVs notwithstanding)
According to Protocol, TikTok’s increasing focus on TV viewing could help it expand its audience, and benefit from the premium prices associated with TV-based advertising. In the US, over a hundred million people now watch YouTube through their TVs each month, and this has helped Google’s video service generate billions of dollars of advertising revenue for the company each quarter.