Category: In the News

TikTok still faces a ban in the United States. But based on the signals they’re getting from the platforms’ agency reps and their own risk calculations, media buyers and brand marketers are willing to bet it isn’t going anywhere.

In fact, despite caveats over the platform’s future, investment is rising. Rather than slow down in anticipation of a shutdown (which would have kicked in June 19, prior to President Donald Trump’s latest executive order), brand spending on TikTok increased from $542 million in April to $588 million in May, according to estimates shared with Digiday by MediaRadar.

Last month’s ad spend was 76% higher than in May 2024. Amazon, Comcast, Disney, Walmart and Intuit were the platform’s top advertisers between January and May, collectively spending $213 million — a 75% rise on the same period last year.

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The U.K.’s Competition Markets Authority is taking up publishers’ fight against Google’s search grip. 

The watchdog said on Tuesday that it wants to set more binding rules around how Google operates search in the U.K. and how publishers’ content is used, including AI Overviews.

That’s a monumental task. And let’s face it, a lot of regulatory scrutiny often lends more toward carrot than stick (with the exception of the DOJ’s ongoing Google antitrust actions, and the European Commission’s major antitrust fines to Google over the years). But the CMA is known as more of a negotiator than a hard-nosed regulator, according to industry experts who deal with them regularly. So what could this really change? 

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