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Posted by Katie Paul
NEW YORK – Advertisers who rely on TikTok as a major digital marketing tool rushed to prepare emergency plans this week, as the realization dawned on many that the popular Chinese social media app may don’t save before the US ban goes into effect on Sunday.
One advertising executive described it as “hair on fire” for the ad world, after months of conventional wisdom saying a solution would exist to keep the short-form video app running.
Kerry Perse, founder of marketing firm Influence & Inspire Consulting and former head of social media at Omnicom Group (NYSE: ) said: “It seemed unbelievable even a few weeks ago to think that there is no TikTok. media center OMD.
“We all thought that any problems with access to the TikTok app would be delayed and drawn out,” he said.
Chinese tech firm ByteDance faces a January 19 deadline to sell TikTok’s US assets or face an unprecedented ban on the app, which is used by 170 million Americans, for reasons of national security.
TikTok plans to shut down the app’s US operations on Sunday without a last-minute discount, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
President Donald Trump’s incoming national security adviser said the new administration plans to put measures in place “to prevent TikTok from going dark,” but it was not immediately clear whether Trump — who takes office in Monday – he can legally do that.
“I think after a long time I feel like this is a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation, we may have a wolf vision,” said Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3. .
If the ban goes through, more than $11 billion in annual US ad spending will be taken away, according to an announcement by advertising group WARC Media.
Much of that spending could shift to platforms where advertisers already have established and run short-form video ad campaigns, particularly Meta’s Instagram and Alphabet (NASDAQ:)’s YouTube Shorts, sources said. four advertising agencies told Reuters.
TikTok employees appeared to be in the dark about what exactly would happen to the app as of Sunday, sources said, although two sources noted that TikTok is offering favorable refund terms. when event services stop in the middle of advertiser campaigns. TikTok did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Even as the ban loomed, the company continued to pitch advertisers with new features, such as a tool released in beta form on Thursday that would make it easier to create, edit and to increase the number of ads, according to an email from this week described to Reuters. .
It also plans to host a booth at the upcoming World Economic Forum meeting of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, next week, after hosting cocktail parties at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Meanwhile, brands and content creators alike have been downloading their data in bulk if the app has been unavailable since Sunday, hoping to salvage at least some of the fruits of their labor.
Another influencer, who promotes food and beauty products in her videos, wrote on Tuesday to advise her nearly 16,000 followers about saving their videos.
“Here’s how to download your TikTok data so you don’t lose everything you’ve had from the last five years,” said Maria Slate, sadly, when the words “it’s ok i’m alive” popped into his head.
The sentiment was a stark change from the mainstream sentiment last month, when advertisers told Reuters they were in no rush to withdraw their advertising dollars from TikTok despite a US appeals court upholding the law. exclusion or restriction.
As of January 8, ad spending on TikTok was set to increase by 57% in the first two months of 2025, according to Guideline.ai, a research firm that tracks initial subscription data from agencies. big ads.
TikTok has become a powerful tool for advertisers looking to reach America’s youth in recent years, growing to 20% of US social media ad spending from just 2% in 2020, its first full year of operation in the United States, Guideline.ai said.
Part of that power comes from the development of the influencer platform and online shopping culture, which has made it a reliable driver of e-commerce sales.
E-Marketer, another research firm, predicted late last year that 43.8% of US TikTok users would have made purchases on the platform by the end of 2024, a higher share than Facebook’s services. (NASDAQ:) and Instagram. .
