Ekimetrics MMM benchmark: how TikTok delivers high return on investment
TikTok is one of the most profitable lever in the mix
A new multi-industry Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) benchmark conducted with Ekimetrics reveals that TikTok consistently delivers high return on investment (ROI) across major sectors in France including Cosmetics & Beauty, Luxury, and CPG. The analysis highlights TikTok’s strong ability to drive both short-term sales and long-term brand impact, often outperforming other digital and offline channels.
Methodology
TikTok partnered with Ekimetrics to release a FR MMM benchmark of TikTok performances across major industries investing in the platform. The goal was to measure the average performance of TikTok compared to other online and offline channels (including short and long term impact), and to assess opportunities for scaling TikTok budget in the media mix. To conduct this analysis, Ekimetrics drew on their previous MMM projects with French clients in the Cosmetics & Beauty, Luxury, and CPG industries, covering data from 2021 to 2024 and including 58 clients' MMM studies where TikTok was modelized as an isolated channel in the mix.
TikTok ranks as the second most profitable lever across all industries
The cross-industry analysis shows TikTok achieving:
+29% higher Total ROI compared to overall media average
+10% higher Total ROI compared to social media average
TikTok ranks as the #2 most efficient sales driver (#1 paid social), both on short (behind search) and long term (behind OLV) ROI. TikTok ranks 11th/14 in terms of media spend though, revealing a strong potential for scale.
Significant growth opportunities in Cosmetics & Beauty and Luxury
Cosmetics & Beauty
TikTok demonstrates strong efficiency in this category:
+49% higher Total ROI compared to overall media average
+72% headroom to scale TikTok budgets while keeping a high efficiency and increasing global brand revenues
In the Beauty Industry, TikTok ranks as the #1 paid social and #2 overall, with +55% higher short-term ROI (and +49% total ROI), outperforming other social platforms. Advertisers still have a lot of room to grow TikTok while keeping a high efficiency, and benefit from the high engagement of the beauty audience on the platform.
Luxury
The Luxury sector also shows clear potential:
+41% higher Total ROI compared to overall media average
+67% headroom to scale TikTok budgets while keeping a high efficiency and increasing global brand revenues
Luxury is another sector where TikTok comes out on top, ranking #2 most profitable paid media channel, both on short and long term. This great performance comes with a recommendation to increase TikTok budgets by 67% on average. That could allow to benefit more from the TikTok full funnel products, staying high in brand image with our premium formats, while reaching efficiently high value customers with our AI-optimised performance products.
Efficiency of TikTok is growing within the CPG industry
In the CPG Industry, TikTok ranks as the #2 paid social channel, with continuous performance increase across years. We observe higher performance than the average in Homecare. For the Food and Beverages sectors, performance could increase with higher budgets.
Homecare: +11% higher Total ROI compared to overall media average
Food & Bev: +55% headroom to scale TikTok budgets and improve overall performance While the CPG industry is still heavily dominated by TV budgets, several studies have demonstrated the complementarity of TikTok with TV, especially when using creatives adapted to TikTok. This opens great perspectives to further digitalize CPG budgets and reach incremental audiences on TikTok.
Conclusion
TikTok as a strategic growth lever for 2026
The MMM benchmark provides clear evidence that TikTok is a highly profitable and scalable channel across multiple industries. With strong efficiency, growing ROI trends, and significant headroom in key categories, TikTok represents a strategic opportunity for brand marketers and CMOs looking to maximize the impact of their media investments in 2026. To support long term efficiency when scaling TikTok, we recommend following our Brand Basics for your burst campaigns:
Campaign length of minimum 3 weeks
Average frequency of minimum 2 per week
Mixing ad products with In-feed and High impact formats
Having a minimum of 5 creative assets by activation
Push your reach on target to minimum 40%
And benefit from our AI-led tools and recent innovations to support your Always-on activations: Smart+, Symphony Creative Studio, Content Suite, TikTok Marketing Scope.
Please reach out to your TikTok team to test the efficiency of your TikTok activations in your media mix.