BEIJING-BASED ByteDance, the privately owned operator of short video app TikTok, booked around 40 billion yuan (US$5.64 billion) in revenue for the January-March quarter, Reuters quoted sources as saying yesterday.

The figure represents growth of more than 130 percent compared with the same period a year earlier, said one of the sources.

ByteDance has set a 2020 revenue target of about 200 billion yuan, the sources said. The sources said ByteDance aims to reach revenue half that of rival Tencent Holdings Ltd.

Tencent reported revenue of nearly 377 billion yuan in 2019.

The growth shows the extent to which 8-year-old ByteDance is capturing digital advertising spend. The bulk of the company’s revenue is mainly from advertising on its apps in China including news aggregator Jinri Toutiao as well as Douyin, its domestic version of TikTok, the sources said, rather than from TikTok itself.

Before ByteDance emerged, China’s ad market had been mainly dominated by e-commerce leader Alibaba Group Holding Ltd., search engine operator Baidu Inc. and Tencent.

The market grew 1.9 percent in the January-March period from the same period a year earlier to be worth 121.2 billion yuan, showed data from iResearch. (SD-Agencies)