TikTok Plans to Make Last Minute Movie Theater Trips Faster and Easier

TikTok movie trailer ads may start making your theater trip planning a bit easier soon.

Showtimes on TikTok is an attempt to create a more convenient kind of TikTok trailer ad, which does more than simply show you carefully edited clips to grab your attention. The company made the announcement within the marketing forecasts and user engagement percentages shared during TikTok's "second global product summit," TikTok World.

What Showtimes on TikTok does is allow advertisers (in this case, movie studios) a way to enhance their movie trailers with added theater and showtime information along with ticket sales. So in practice, you could see an enticing movie trailer on TikTok and then immediately look into where it might be playing near you, then buy tickets. All directly through or linking from the TikTok app itself—no need to create reminders for later or try to remember the name for a quick Google search.

Looking at TikTok's example, all you have to do is tap the Showtimes button at the bottom of the video and enter your zipcode to bring up a list of theaters and viewing times in your area. From there, tap the time you want and choose from one of the available ticket sellers to view prices and availability.

For the moment, Showtimes on TikTok is only available to a number of US movie studios that have been invited to join the program. Assuming at least some studios decide to try this new ad feature out, you'll probably start seeing more TikTok trailers with showtimes and ticket info popping up in your feed in the near future.