TikTok Tells Advertisers It Won’t Back Down as U.S. Ban Looms

The company’s invite-only NewFronts pitch to advertisers arrived on the back of some good news: TikTok and Universal Music earlier in the day had announced a deal to restore the record company’s music to the platform.

But as advertisers and media buyers drank lavender and elderflower cocktails, the possibility remained that this would be TikTok’s final year at the annual showcases for digital media buyers.

President Biden last month signed a bill into law that will ban TikTok in the U.S. if its Chinese owner, ByteDance, can’t or won’t find a buyer within a year. TikTok, which earlier this year encouraged its users to campaign against the bill, has called the measure unconstitutional and said it would challenge it in court.

A ban would rankle many advertisers, who in the past few years have grown enamored of TikTok’s products, tools and ability to reach elusive Gen Z consumers, marketing executives say. Social-media users aged 18 to 24 spend an average of one hour and 17 minutes a day using TikTok, according to market research firm Emarketer.

“Advertisers love TikTok because their target audiences love TikTok,” said Jon Morgenstern, head of investment at marketing agency VaynerMedia.

The so-called triopoly of Meta Platforms, Alphabet’s Google and Amazon.com still accounts for the lion’s share of dollars spent on digital advertising in the U.S., but newer players including retailers, streamers, banks and smaller social-media businesses continue to vie for the more than $250 billion spent by advertisers online each year.

TikTok’s U.S. ad sales will grow 31% this year to $8.66 billion, accounting for 2.8% of all digital ad spend, according to estimates from Emarketer. TikTok declined to comment on its financial performance.

TikTok has moved quickly to offer advertisers the tools they want, marketing executives say. It offers a range of ad types, including videos that appear in users’ feeds, custom products such as branded augmented reality filters, and branded hashtag “challenges” that encourage users to participate in a marketing campaign and post about it.

“They really seem like they’re on the cutting edge as far as innovating for media buyers, more than other channels,” said Chris Cheever, director of paid social at media agency Exverus. TikTok’s Creative Exchange, launched at the end of 2021, has helped streamline brands’ deals with influencers on the platform, for example, Cheever said.

TikTok’s president of global business solutions, Blake Chandlee, shown in 2023. PHOTO: OLIVIER ANRIGO/GETTY IMAGES

TikTok wooed media buyers further with its obliging style of account management, which provides a stream of updates and new materials and often makes staffers available to jump on calls proactively and reactively—a salve in an era when so much of digital media buying relies on a self-service model, marketing executives say.

Chandlee, the face of the platform to the advertising industry, reached out to TikTok’s ads clients after the ban bill became law, offering his thanks for their support and committing to working relationships in the future, according to an email seen by The Wall Street Journal.

TikTok used Thursday night’s 300-person mediapalooza on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, a departure from the smaller events and dinners with which it usually courts ad buyers, to introduce a suite of new offerings and tools. The company said it would give advertisers more choice and control over where their ads can be placed, described new partnerships with the likes of Paramount Global and the National Hockey League, and announced new ways to measure the success of advertiser campaigns.

Advertisers have kept a business-as-usual approach to spending on TikTok in the face of its potential prohibition, although some have started to think about how their media budgets would shift if it does come into effect, marketing executives said.

However much they appreciate TikTok’s appeal among young consumers, a ban would be unlikely to cause them significant long-term pains, the executives said. Most brands distribute their ads evenly among social- and digital-media companies, and TikTok-style ads—which favor vertical video and a chatty, DIY-style of production and scripting—already are frequently repurposed for other social-media products, such as Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts.

“A lot of people go to TikTok for the creators who are on there, more than the platform itself,” said Exverus’s Cheever. “So whoever is able to offer those opportunities to creators will probably see that the audience will follow.”

文章来源：The Wall Street Journal

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