Are they gonna ban TikTok or not?

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Today’s Social Media advertising rates are roasting on an open fire:

↗️ META: $10.45 CPM | ↗️ TIKTOK: $5.87 CPM | ↘️ SNAPCHAT: $9.78 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• ♾️ Why Meta’s health check has advertisers worried

• Here’s your guide to BeReal ads 🐝

• 📺 YouTube’s next CTV frontier: Podcasts?

But first…

⚖️ Are they gonna ban TikTok or not?

Our money is on “not,” and we’ll explain why, but we agree with the director of Cornell’s Tech Policy Institute, who stated the obvious: “TikTok is in an increasingly desperate situation.” 

Last week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit upheld a law that will ban TikTok if ByteDance refuses to sell its U.S. business. ByteDance, of course, has refused to sell. What’s more, nobody (save billionaire activist Frank McCourt) wants to buy it—because TikTok isn’t TikTok without ByteDance’s proprietary algorithm, which by Chinese law cannot be part of the sale. But in the absence of a sale, the new law will go into effect on January 19: Google and Apple will be forced to remove TikTok from their app stores, and Oracle will be blocked from hosting it on its data centers, leading to a quick death for TikTok’s U.S. market. 

It’s worth noting that no one — including U.S. lawmakers — wants to ban the app. Instead, the threat of a ban was supposed to force a sale of TikTok to a company with a less favorable relationship to the Chinese government. That tactic failed, and public opinion has softened. Pew Research reported in September that public support for the ban had declined from 50% in 2023 to just 32%, with higher support for the ban among Republicans (42%) than Democrats (24%). The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has called the ruling “flawed and dangerous,” and “a major blow to freedom of expression online.” The Electronic Frontier Foundation and other free-speech groups have filed amicus briefs arguing that the ban is unconstitutional.

But there are now only two paths left for TikTok to avoid the ban. The first: judicial relief from the Supreme Court, which could—but does not have to—hear TikTok’s appeal. The second: An intervention by incoming President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly signalled his intention to “save TikTok”—an abrupt about-face from his position during his first term, when he threatened to ban it. SCOTUS is unlikely to act in time. And the ban goes into effect the day before Trump takes office, which is why TikTok just petitioned the court for a stay of execution until the new administration arrives.

So why do we think the ban still won’t happen? There appear to be three paths for Trump to counter the ban. He could ask Congress to repeal it (unlikely); order his Attorney General not to enforce it (problematic, but possible); or he could exploit a loophole “by declaring that TikTok already meets the law’s requirements without any actual changes.” That last option seems the most likely: it would allow him to use TikTok as a bargaining chip in his ongoing trade negotiations with China, extract favorable concessions from ByteDance, and declare a victory for free speech that would have bipartisan support. 

Still: Are we certain this will all go smoothly in a few weeks? We are not.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

⏰ Meanwhile, in quality-of-life updates: TikTok is testing new functionality for Split Testing, including split testing for Smart+, campaign-level split tests, and an Experiments Manager page. Details are here. 

Also in beta (although the beta is now closed): a new feature that lets you bulk download ad preview QR codes or URLs into an Excel file for easy sharing. More info here.

🐝 BeReal, Gen-Z’s favorite social platform, is giving us a deeper look at their advertising platform, which we told you about back in July. 

• Ads are available starting at a $10,000 minimum buy, via direct IO only. 

• Advertisers can target by age, geo, operating system (iOS vs. Android), and gender. Interest targeting is coming in 2025.

• Full-day takeovers are available for $50,000 per day, with guaranteed 100% SOV.

• “First impressions” takeovers are available for $25,000 per day. These guarantee the first 3 impressions for all users for 1 day.

• Minimum buy for a brand lift study: $150,000.

• Non-skippable “Spotlight” video ads are coming in Q1 2025, and organic boosts are coming in Q2.

• 

♾️ Meta is planning to limit or completely restrict advertiser access to data related to health and wellness, financial services, and politics, according to Marketing Brew. While the new policy language is vague, some advertisers worry that Meta will remove the ability to optimize for purchases in those specific categories. Watch this space.

⭕ Reddit has unveiled an ads insight section — similar to Meta’s, except that Reddit’s also shows keyword-level performance. Check it out:

🤩 Cameo, the personalized video message platform, has now expanded to all creators—not just celebrities. Begun as a pilot program last May, the new platform officially launched as CameoX. About 31,000 "self-enrolled creators" have signed up.

📺 YouTube shared new stats on ConnectedTV (CTV) viewing, including:

• Watchtime of sports content on TV sets has grown over 30% year-over-year.

• YouTube users now “watch” over 400 million hours of podcasts each month via their living room devices.

• Up next, YouTube is adding a “Subscribe” button directly to its CTV video player. In early testing, YouTube claims the more prominent, accessible button has increased subscriptions via CTV by 40%.

Run CTV Ads on Roku This Holiday

This holiday season, Roku is making it easy to reach your audience while they’re streaming – and shopping. Take Roku Ads Manager for a spin and discover how easy it is to set up, optimize, and measure CTV campaigns in real-time to drive results.

Read the holiday guide

🐘The Elephant In the Room: Our weekly office poll!

If you’re not following Gupta Media on socials, you’re missing out on Premium Content, including our world-famous swag drops. You’re also missing out on late-night updates from last night’s Gupta Media holiday party, when new favorite client Suki Waterhouse dropped by for a nightcap, in advance of her gig tonight at Roadrunner in Boston. Which leads us to this week’s poll question: 

📊 Last edition’s poll results: What are we calling the last week of December now, anyway?

🟩🟩⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Binge Week 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Twixmas 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜️Feral Week 

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜️ Q5

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