It’s time to talk about TikTok & brand safety

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are punchy:

↗️ META: $8.47 CPM | ↘️ TIKTOK: $2.73 CPM | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $5.66 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 📌 Pinterest rolls out advertiser incentives to switch from TikTok

• Tubi’s Superb Owl moment 🏈

• 📸 3 ways Instagram looks even more like TikTok this week

But first…

⏰ It’s time to talk about TikTok & brand safety

Last we spoke, TikTok was teetering on the precipice of goodbye. Creators greeted “The End” with a deluge of spilled secrets and promises to connect elsewhere…only to sheepishly return shortly after, like party people filing back into the club after a fire drill. Sure, we’re in the same space, but the vibe is off. Some users on TikTok are convinced the algorithm has been tweaked, or maybe it’s just warming back up. Meanwhile, every 10 minutes there’s a new theory—and another email from us—about What’s Happening With the TikTok Ban.

The two most important things for agencies to keep in mind: 

• First, the resolution of the TikTok ban may end up being more about power than politics, but it is likely to become more political over time. The more political it becomes, the more we’ll need to think about brand safety. 

• Second, beware pronouncements that a deal is imminent. TikTok has entered the realm of constitutional law, so any sale or executive order is almost certain to go directly to court, and then all the way up the ladder.  

And brand safety isn’t just an issue down the road. On TikTok this week, users shared examples of terms that appeared to be muted in search results, as well as rampant speculation that tweaks were made to people’s “For You” feeds—although, to be clear, we’ve seen no proof that this is the case. 

We’ve heard from clients asking about a rise in politically-themed content on the site. Our TikTok rep said they weren’t seeing any such trends on the platform, and speculated that a spike could have been tied to the inauguration on January 20. This is probably a good time to remind you that advertisers concerned about brand safety can take advantage of TikTok’s inventory filters to exclude political content.

Meanwhile, TikTok remains functional in the U.S., but the app—as well as Lemon8 and CapCut—continue to be unavailable in the Google Play and Apple app stores. Coincidentally, searches for “Can I use TikTok with VPN?” surged. President Trump issued an executive order promising not to enforce the TikTok ban for 75 days, but legal experts concluded that his order has no legal standing. In the meantime, agencies can access TikTok Ads Manager, and U.S. ad campaigns have resumed. In the past 48 hours, one American investor made headlines by suggesting that a TikTok sale could be concluded as soon as this week—but observers cautioned that the deals being floated do not appear to comply with the law, which means they’re likely to end up in court. Finally, there is a bipartisan effort brewing in Congress to pass a new law that would repeal the ban outright.

Go deeper: 

• How Brands TikTok’d Their Way Through A Flip-Flop (AdWeek) 

• As Trump Returns To the White House, Media Buyers Clamp Down on Safety (Digiday)

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta: The competition to attract TikTok refugees ramped up this week. Instagram switched its profile photo grids from squares to rectangles, increased the max length of Reels from 90 seconds to 3 minutes, and rolled out a new stand-alone app, “Edits,” that differs from CapCut only in that you can actually download Edits without access to VPN. Meanwhile, Meta introduced a “Breakthrough Bonus” program to attract creators with bounties of up to $5,000.

📸 Instagram confirmed this week that it’s working to fix a bug on the app in which users searching for the terms “Democrat” or “Democrats” were delivered an error message saying “we’ve hidden these results” or “results for the term you’ve searched for may contain sensitive content.” Meta claims this is not evidence of political bias but instead an accident that also affected search terms related to both Republicans and Democrats.

• Adding fuel to the fire, some Meta users are reporting that their accounts re-followed the profiles of President Donald Trump, Vice President JD Vance and first lady Melania Trump after they had unfollowed those accounts. In response, Meta claimed it wasn’t forcing people to follow those accounts and that it  “may take some time for follow and unfollow requests to go through.”

💰What’s happening with CPM rates? We’re seeing a greater-than-expected YOY increase in Meta’s ad rates for January—which some have speculated is a result of increased competition as advertisers shifted spend away from TikTok. Typically we see annual single-digit YOY increases in Meta CPM, although individual months will vary. AdWeek quoted one agency as seeing CPMs up 16% YOY. While we’re still waiting for final monthly numbers, we’re seeing January YOY increases of nearly 40%. 

💥Pro Tip. Because we still care about these things: We’re starting to see Meta’s new target frequency option for auction campaigns available in more ad accounts:

📌 Pinterest is leaning into the uncertainty around the TikTok ban with a new “why Pinterest?” site, direct support for new partners, and—like other social platforms—”bonus media” in the form of a percentage match deal for some brands. Any resemblance to Snapchat’s “Find Your Favorites on Snapchat” campaign—which we told you about last week—are purely coincidental.

🔎 Google added a “Source” column to Performance Max search terms insights to give some explanation for what triggered ads to show.

👀 Staying on top of creative refreshes? Google Ads added a “used since” column to show when each creative asset was first implemented in the account.

✨ Coming Soon: Starting in April, the maximum CPV bidding strategy will no longer be available in Google Ads. Video campaigns will need to use a target CPV strategy, which aims for an average CPV your ads will achieve instead of treating your bid as the highest amount you’re willing to pay.

🏈 Big news for Tubi: We may have buried the lede. Fox will stream the Super Bowl on its free, ad-supported platform Tubi, marking the first time Fox has made the game accessible via the streaming service. However: while watching on Tubi doesn’t usually require an account, viewers will need to register in order to watch.

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

Since this has been the talk of the office water cooler this week, we want to hear it from you:

📊 Last edition’s poll results: What's your favorite TikTok alternative?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Red Note

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Lemon8

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Flip 

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Clapper 

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ ReelShort 

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ DramaBox

Thanks for reading! We’ll be back next week to fill your inbox with more tips, tricks, and treats from the addressable universe.

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