TikTok deal tomorrow? Here’s the details.

Today’s Social Media advertising rates are floating in space:

↘️ META: $8.15 CPM | ↗️ TIKTOK: $5.38 CPM | ↗️ SNAPCHAT: $11.40 CPM

In this week’s edition: 

• 🤖 You can now “sponsor” Google’s AI Overviews

• Are your favorite ad options coming to Threads? 🧵

• 🔊 Amazon DSP pumps up the volume on audio ads

But first…

⏰  TikTok LifeWatch: Let’s make a deal!

Is this the end of TikTok DeathWatch?! TL;DR: a deal to sell TikTok could be announced as soon as tomorrow. 

As described by the Wall Street Journal, ByteDance would create a new app for U.S. users, and sell an 80% stake to a consortium of American investors including Oracle, Silver Lake, Susquehanna, KKR, General Lannick, and others. The U.S. government would get a board seat in the new company. And 20% of the new U.S. TikTok would remain under Chinese control.

Confirmation could come as soon as Friday, when President Donald Trump and the Chinese President Xi Jinping are scheduled to speak by phone. The deal has been framed as an olive branch in broader U.S./China trade negotiations, with China laying the groundwork for a proposed summit between Xi and Trump on Chinese soil in 2026. 

The details of the deal appear to narrowly satisfy the conditions of the U.S. law banning TikTok—or they would, so long as the actual Chinese ownership comes in at 19.9%, since the statute requires less than 20% foreign ownership. 

If there’s a snag in the deal, it will likely have to do with the algorithm that powers TikTok: it belongs to ByteDance, and the Chinese government has treated it practically as a state secret. According to WSJ, the TikTok deal "includes some sort of licensing” of the algorithm.

But that would likely be illegal under the U.S. law, which prevents any deal that includes “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm.” Some have speculated that ByteDance could offer a “rebuilt” version of the algorithm to get around the statute—analogous to how U.S. chip manufacturer Nvidia has created lower-capacity microchips for the Chinese AI market. 

💡The bottom line: TikTok isn’t TikTok without the algorithm. And if the new U.S. TikTok doesn’t have it, there will be a lot of questions from creators and users about the app’s long-term future.

The Inside Scoop🍦: Now trending in performance media

♾️ Meta will enable brands that don’t have a Threads account to expand their Instagram or Facebook campaigns to Threads, by using their Facebook and IG posts as the basis for their Threads promotions.

Speaking of which: new ad options are coming to Threads, including carousel ads and expanded image formats. Here’s what that looks like:

⚽ Meta, in partnership with National Research Group, has released a new report on how its platforms support sports fandom. The research was conducted across adults 18 or older in the USA, UK, France, Germany, Brazil and India, who identified as sports enthusiasts and who engage with sports content on at least one Meta platform. A few highlights:

• 96% of sports fans on Meta use either Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger or Threads before, during and after a live game or event, surpassing all rival platforms.

• 46% of sports participation happens outside of game time, with 25% of that time spent engaging with non-game sports content on social platforms.

• 47% of Instagram consumers and 41% of WhatsApp consumers report higher sports engagement vs. last year, compared to 36% for traditional TV.

• Meta is the #1 trusted destination for discovering sports products/services (60% vs. 40% YouTube, 29% traditional TV, 13% TikTok).

⚠️ Buyer Beware: According to at least one source, Meta recently changed its Conversion Lift methodology. That’s a big deal: it means you won’t be able to compare new testing with prior testing. It’s likely to affect incremental attribution results and optimization.

• What should you do now? Keep an eye out for any changes in performance within your “Incremental Attribution” campaigns.

💅 Pro Tip: Meta announced that advertisers can now use value rules for awareness and engagement objectives.

🔎 Google is testing new ads within its AI overviews. In addition to the Search and Shopping ads that it’s been testing in AI overviews since May, it’s now expanding via a new “Sponsored” breakout within some results. The option will be part of Google’s AI Max for Search campaigns. Check it out:

▶️ Meanwhile, YouTube announced a slew of new updates at its annual “Made on YouTube” event, including a new monetization option for livestreams: side-by-side ads, which will display ads without interrupting your stream. Here’s what that looks like:

💅 Pro Tip: Google will automatically add Store Visits as a primary conversion type, with a pre-set value assigned by Google itself—potentially raising ROAS with estimated, not actual, sales.

• Some advertisers received notices from Google stating that, starting Oct. 8, a store visit value of about $220 will be applied to their accounts.

• Unless opted out, the change will roll into campaign reports and impact bidding strategies such as target ROAS.

• Advertisers can opt out via a form before the deadline, or manually reverse changes after Oct. 8.

👽 Reddit is adding a new 6-second engaged video view optimization(!), in addition to its current two-second view option. Not only will you be able to optimize for 6-second views, you’ll also have the option to pay per 6s view.

🤖 Meanwhile, Reddit and Google are discussing a new partnership that would weave Reddit content more directly into Google’s AI products. If it goes through, “user-generated discussions will likely carry even more weight in shaping AI-driven answers and referral traffic,” according to SearchEngineLand.

• How important is Reddit content to Google’s AI? Enough that Reddit wants the deal to be priced dynamically—so that Reddit gets more money “as Reddit’s data becomes more central to AI answers.”

📦 Amazon Ads: Another week, another Amazon Ads partnership deal—this time with SiriusXM. Advertisers buying through Amazon’s DSP will be able to access SiriusXM Media’s streaming portfolio — an audience of more than 160 million listeners, including Pandora and SoundCloud in the U.S., with podcasts set to follow – making it the largest audio partner to plug into Amazon’s DSP.

🤖 Joining most other major ad platforms, Amazon Ads has introduced an agentic AI tool in Creative Studio that lets advertisers produce professional-quality ads that work across Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, Amazon DSP, and Brand Stores. The tool acts as a “creative partner,” generating ideas, storyboards, videos, and display ads using Amazon’s retail insights, shopper signals, and brand data.

👻 A new study published by Snapchat in partnership with Havas Media Network, surveyed more than 7,500 parents about their social media use. According to the data, parents use social media more once they have a child:

⚖️  Platform Watch: Google, Amazon face FTC probe

🕵️ The Federal Trade Commission is investigating whether Google and Amazon misled advertisers by failing to properly disclose terms and pricing for ads on their platforms.

• At Google, the FTC is looking at internal ad pricing processes and whether the company raised costs without informing advertisers.

• At Amazon, the FTC is looking at real-time ad auctions, including whether the company disclosed reserve pricing, i.e. its minimum price floors for sponsored listings.

🧑‍⚖️ Adding to Google’s legal troubles, Magnite, the largest independent sell-side platform (SSP) in the ad industry, filed a federal lawsuit against Google this week, alleging that it unlawfully monopolized the ad exchange and publisher ad server markets. Magnite is the third major SSP to hit Google with an antitrust complaint within the last two months.

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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