TikTok’s latest offering is capitalizing on the app’s ability to serve as a discovery engine for other media — something its users already take advantage of by sharing short clips of movies and TV shows. Today, the company is partnering with studios like Warner Bros. to launch a feature that lets users discover movies and TV shows through the short-form video app.
The new feature, called “Spotlight,” appears on videos related to a film or series, and directs users to a dedicated landing page where they can learn additional information about the title, such as the synopsis, and cast, as well as short video content from creators. From the landing page, users can watch the title on streaming services (such as Max), rent on-demand, or buy movie tickets to see it in theaters.
Videos that qualify for Spotlight links must have a certain number of views and creators with a decent following. Creators participating in a Spotlight campaign can earn various incentives, such as exclusive frames for their profile photo, filters, merchandise, movie tickets and even access to red-carpet events.
Warner Bros., with its vast IP library of popular titles, is using Spotlight to promote the second season of “House of the Dragon.” It’s currently rewarding creators for posting videos about the show — whether that be a review, funny skit, makeup tutorial, and so on — with a limited profile frame for their preferred House: Team Green or Team Black. Creators who qualify must post a 60-second video (using the hashtag #HOTD) that doesn’t violate TikTok’s policies.
The entertainment giant first experimented with the feature in February when it promoted “Dune: Part Two” on the platform. This resulted in more than 260,000 fan-created posts in the two weeks leading up to the movie premiere, according to TikTok.
At launch, Spotlight will only be available to a select number of studios.
Over time, the feature could serve not only as a tool for finding new things to watch or stream, but could also help cement TikTok’s place as a first stop for media-focused discovery, ahead of Google. With the recent antitrust ruling against Google as well as the rise of AI, which sees companies like Perplexity and OpenAI building their own search tools, TikTok’s latest move represents yet another way Google’s dominance may be challenged in the months to come.
In the past, TikTok has provided marketing solutions for movie studio marketers, including Showtimes: movie trailer ads that display a “Get Showtimes” button to help users find nearby theater options and showtimes.
The company has also previously teamed up with ticketing companies Ticketmaster and AXS to let users purchase tickets for concerts and other live events directly through TikTok.
