It’s time for our March TikTok analysis. We’ll be using the same benchmark of 50 publishers to understand who’s leading on TikTok and what type of content is driving their success.
Here are some key takeaways from this month:
- ESPN remains the dominant publisher, totaling 314 million engagements
- Hard news continues to rival entertainment just underneath the big sports publishers
- Engagement across the top 10 posts dipped compared to February
What publishers performed best on TikTok in March 2025?
Before we dive into the top publishers, we want to note that we’ve changed how we create this graph for better benchmarking going forward.
Previously, we calculated engagement based on the top 1,000 posts, which favored top performers because they were responsible for a larger majority of posts. Now, we’re measuring total engagement across all posts by each publisher, providing a fuller view of which publishers are getting engagement.
This means we have the opportunity to spotlight publishers we might have missed before because they didn’t have enough posts crack the top 1,000. That doesn’t necessarily change who comes out on top though, and as you can see, ESPN was still the clear leader in March, having earned 314 million engagements.
Top publishers on TikTok by engagement (50-publisher sample)
All together, the 50 publishers we tracked accumulated over 853 million engagements in March.
What content performed best on TikTok in March 2025?
When it comes to the top posts, we still pulled from the top 1,000 in order to spotlight the content that drove the highest engagement by resonating the most with audiences.
ESPN was still prominent, with four of the top 10 posts this month. Its most successful post, which featured a corgi dog race, took the number one spot with over 8.5 million engagements. It’s not a complete surprise why this stole the show, and we couldn’t resist including it below.
@espn Go little guy go 🥹 (via JackAllenTV/X) #dog #race ♬ snowfall - Øneheart & reidenshi
CNN covered Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s response to President Trump’s international tariffs, which amassed over 3.2 million engagements, while NBC received 2.4 million engagements for reporting on footage of a woman being arrested by suspected ICE agents.
@cnnCanadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responds after President Trump enacted 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, saying the two major US trading partners had “no room” left to negotiate to avoid the levies. He also doubled the tariff on Chinese goods to 20%. ♬ original sound - CNN
@nbcnews Doorbell footage obtained by NBC News shows the moment Rumeysa Ozturk was arrested. Oztur is a Turkish national and doctoral student at #Tufts ♬ original sound - nbcnews
Once again, we’re seeing hard news hold its own against entertainment content on TikTok, with an even greater presence from all news publishers in the top posts this month. ESPN may have continued its reign as the top publisher, but mainstream and cable news outlets are proving they can stand toe-to-toe.
That’s a wrap on March. Keep an eye out for our rankings across Instagram, Facebook, and X.
