By Katie Paul
NEW YORK – Advertisers who rely on TikTok as a major digital marketing tool rushed to prepare contingency plans this week, as it dawned on many that the popular Chinese-owned social media app may not be saved before the US ban kicks in. strength on Sunday.
One marketing executive described it as a “hair on fire” moment for the advertising world, after months of conventional wisdom that a solution would materialize to keep the short-form video app afloat.
“Even just a few weeks ago, it seemed unbelievable to imagine that there would be no TikTok,” said Kerry Perse, founder of marketing firm Influence & Inspire Consulting and former head of social media at Omnicom Group’s (NYSE: ) media agency OMD.
“We all thought the issues with accessing the TikTok app would be slow and time-consuming,” she said.
Chinese tech company ByteDance faces a Jan. 19 deadline to sell TikTok’s US assets or accept an unprecedented ban on the app, used by 170 million Americans, on national security grounds.
TikTok plans to shut down the app in the US on Sunday barring a last-minute delay, Reuters reported on Wednesday.
US President-elect Donald Trump’s new national security adviser said the new administration plans to introduce measures “to keep TikTok from going down”, but it was not immediately clear whether Trump – who takes office on Monday – can legally do so.
“I think after a long time we feel like this is a ‘boy who cried wolf’ situation, we might actually see the wolf,” said Craig Atkinson, CEO of digital marketing agency Code3.
If the ban does go through, more than $11 billion in annual U.S. advertising investment could be up for grabs, according to a forecast by marketing group WARC Media.
Most of that spending is likely to shift to platforms where advertisers are already established running short video ad campaigns, primarily Meta’s Instagram and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ: ) YouTube Shorts, four ad agency sources told Reuters.
TikTok staff did not appear to know exactly what would happen to the app as of Sunday, the sources said, although two sources noted that TikTok had offered favorable refund terms in the event that event services were halted 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 introduce new features to advertisers, such as a tool launched in test form on Thursday that would make it easier to create, modify and add ads in bulk, according to an email from this week described to Reuters.
It also planned to host a booth at the upcoming World Economic Forum meeting of political and business leaders in Davos, Switzerland, next week, after hosting a cocktail party at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas earlier this month.
Meanwhile, brands and content creators have been downloading their data en masse in case the app goes down from Sunday, hoping to salvage at least some of the fruits of their labor.
One influencer, who features cereal and beauty products in her videos, posted on Tuesday advising her nearly 16,000 followers on how to save their videos.
“Here’s how to download your TikTok data so you don’t lose literally everything you’ve had in the past five years,” said Maria Slate, grimacing as the words “it’s okay, I’m fine” flashed above her head.
The sentiment was a marked change from the prevailing sentiment last month, when advertisers told Reuters they were in no rush to shift their marketing budgets away from TikTok despite a US appeals court upholding a law requiring a takedown or ban.
As of Jan. 8, ad spending on TikTok is expected to grow 57% in the first two months of 2025, according to Guideline.ai, a research firm that tracks booking data from major ad agencies.
TikTok has become a powerful tool in recent years for advertisers looking to reach young Americans in particular, growing to 20% of U.S. social media ad spending from just 2% in 2020, its first full year in the United States, Guideline.ai said.
Part of that strength came from the platform’s cultivation of influencers and an online shopping culture, making it a reliable driver of e-commerce sales.
E-Marketer, another research firm, forecast late last year that about 43.8% of U.S. TikTok users would make a purchase on the platform by the end of 2024, a higher share than on services owned by Meta Facebook (NASDAQ:) and Instagram.
