TikTok drives 90% purchase rate

Social commerce is the point here — not just TikTok, and not just ads. The interesting part is that product discovery, persuasion, and purchase are starting to happen in one continuous motion. That’s the shift behind the new TikTok number circulating this week. Infobae’s May 8 piece says TikTok Insights Colombia now shows 9 in 10 users bought a product or service after discovering it on the platform, while TikTok’s advertiser base in Colombia grew 53% between Q1 2025 and Q1 2026. ### Where does the 90% figure come from? It appears to come from TikTok Insights Colombia, cited in the Infobae piece and echoed in other Colombian coverage tied to TikTok’s local business push. The claim is specifically about users in Colombia, not all TikTok users everywhere. That distinction matters, because the headline can sound global when it’s really a market-level stat attached to TikTok’s local ad story. (infobae.com) ### Is 90% the whole story? Not really. TikTok has published other commerce research with lower but still strong numbers. One TikTok retail one-pager says 37% of users discovered something on TikTok and immediately went to buy it, and that users spend 14% more when TikTok is part of the purchase journey. NIQ and TikTok also said in June 2024 that 55% of surveyed consumers were already making direct purchases from social media or livestream platforms for grocery and household items. (infobae.com) So the 90% stat is best read as a broad “have ever bought after discovery” measure in one market — not a universal instant-conversion rate. ### Why is TikTok especially good at this? Because TikTok doesn’t separate entertainment from shopping very cleanly. A user sees a creator demo, then comments, then reviews, then a brand clip, then maybe a shop link — all in the same feed. TikTok’s own materials describe this as a non-linear “infinite loop” of discovery, consideration, purchase, review, and participation. Basically, the ad doesn’t arrive as a hard interruption. (ads.tiktok.com) It often arrives disguised as useful or entertaining content, which helps explain why 60% of users in the Colombia data said ads there feel entertaining and 41% said they resemble organic content more than traditional advertising. ### Why does advertiser growth matter here? Because it suggests brands are seeing enough payoff to keep piling in. Infobae says the number of Colombian advertisers on TikTok rose 53% in a year, helped by new ad formats and products. That doesn’t prove every campaign works. But it does show the platform is becoming more commercially legible — less experimental, more operational. Once that happens, teams stop treating social as a brand-awareness side project and start treating it like a revenue channel. (ads.tiktok.com) ### What changes inside a company? The walls between marketing, merchandising, payments, fraud, and customer support get thinner. If discovery happens in-feed and purchase follows fast, then stockouts, bad fulfillment, chargebacks, and returns become part of the same user experience as the video itself. TikTok’s own commerce materials hint at this with sold-out trends, post-purchase sharing, and creator-driven word of mouth. (infobae.com) The catch is that going viral is now the easy part. Surviving the operational consequences is the harder part. ### Is this just a Colombia story? No — but Colombia is the peg. The broader trend is global. NIQ’s TikTok Shop work frames social and video platforms as places where people now shop “everywhere,” with fewer barriers between browsing and buying. The exact percentages will vary by country, age, and category. But the direction is clear: social platforms are no longer just sending traffic to stores. They are becoming stores — or at least the front door to one. (ads.tiktok.com) ### What’s the bottom line? The real news isn’t that TikTok can influence purchases. Everyone already knew that. The news is how complete the loop is becoming. When a platform can entertain you, recommend a product, make the ad feel native, and convert the sale in the same session, commerce stops looking like a funnel and starts looking like a feed. (infobae.com) (nielseniq.com)