TikTok owner ByteDance denies it earned more advertising money than all Chinese television stations combined
- A Chinese social media post claims that ByteDance may have reaped US$44 billion in advertising money last year
- The Beijing tech unicorn, which does not disclose financial information to the public, calls the rumour ‘fake news’
TikTok owner ByteDance has denied claims on Chinese social media that it raked in more advertising revenue last year than all of the country’s television channels combined.
The post, published on Wednesday by the online account “Daily Innovation Observation”, based its speculation on a Reuters report in early January that said ByteDance’s 2021 revenue reached US$58 billion, along with the author’s assumption that advertising accounted for 77 per cent of the company’s income.
The post concluded that ByteDance may have reaped US$44 billion in advertising money last year, exceeding the 194 billion yuan (US$30 billion) that Chinese television networks made from the same source.
The Beijing-based company issued a statement late on Wednesday, rejecting the back-of-the-envelope calculation and calling it “fake news”. It did not respond to a request for further comment on Thursday.
ByteDance, a private company, has no obligation to disclose financial information to the public. As the world's most valuable unicorn, however, its balance sheet has attracted constant attraction.
The denial comes as ByteDance, along with other Chinese Big Tech companies, has been lying low amid a regulatory storm that wiped trillions of dollars off stock markets and slowed business expansion in the sector.