TikTokers Now Beat Salman Khan, Ranveer Singh and Virat Kohli in Popularity and Engagement

Last month, online video intelligence and analytics platform Vidooly released a report on digital video trends in 2019. An interesting development showed TikTok influencers holding their own in the category of ‘Most-viewed Profiles’ on Instagram amidst Bollywood stars and YouTube, news and entertainment channels. A comparative analysis by city-based digital media firm Qyuki (which used content tracking platform CrowdTangle as a source) further revealed a peculiar trend in engagement patterns over the past year.

Instagram followers aside, engagement seems to be the biggest concern for creators given the platform’s penchant for algorithmic bewilderment. And TikTokers seem to have cracked a code with their hits seemingly migrating to Instagram too. 

The analysis revealed that while Bollywood superstars Salman Khan (29.5 M) and Ranveer Singh (29.3 M) and India men’s national cricket team captain Virat Kohli (49.1 M), arguably the most popular figures in the country and Indian pop culture, lead the board when it comes to number of Instagram followers but experienced a shifting spotlight in the past year when it came to views and comments, signalling dipped engagement.

Photo: Qyuki Digital Media

In 2019, Mr Faisu (9.8 M) led the TikTok roster when it came to the number of comments, receiving a whopping 7.7 million comments on Instagram in 2019 while Hasnain Khan (6.1 M) received 3 million comments. They both came ahead of Kohli who garnered 2.9 million comments over the past year. TikTokers Jannat Zubair (13.5 M) and Avneet Kaur (8.9 M) followed in the list with 2.4 million comments each. Salman ranked sixth on the list, receiving 2.1 million comments in the last year while TikToker Adnaan Shaikh (4.8 M) edged over Singh, garnering 2 million comments while the latter received 1.7 million comments. YouTuber Bhuvan Bam (8.2 M) came in next with 1.2 million comments while TikToker Awez Darbar (4.4 M) had 1.1. million comments in 2019.

Photo: Qyuki Digital Media

A similar trend was witnessed in the number of video views though the mainstream icons still managed to hold on to some ground by finding themselves in the top five spots. 

Photo: Qyuki Digital Media

Finally, when it came to overall engagement, the digital superstars found themselves at the top of the scoreboard in 2019 with the mainstream icons taking up the last three ranks. Mr Faisu again lead the ranking, receiving the highest percentage of average engagement (15.20 percent) while Salman found himself in the lowest rung with 4.04 percent engagement.

This just goes to show that in the digital frontier, there’s no such thing as a constant and with new creators leveraging the space every single day, there are bound to be new stakeholders who claim their share in the entertainment market.