They saved TikTok
But what exactly did they save?
POV by Gellena Lukats, Executive Director, Paid Social
What’s Happening?
Ending years of drama, TikTok has been “saved,” an announcement made by the Trump administration with the fanfare usually reserved for a major peace accord. U.S. investors are in control, Oracle holds the data keys, and the Chinese threat is supposedly neutralized. The question now isn’t if TikTok will survive… it’s which version of TikTok will survive the deal. Did we destroy the platform in order to save it?
What’s It Mean
TikTok’s algorithm was always the main reason for anyone to buy TikTok. The algorithm survives—sort of. Unofficially, China’s export laws mean the real secret recipe can’t legally be transferred. What its new owners get instead is a licensed or retrained facsimile: a lookalike model, built on U.S. data, supervised by American lawyers and stripped of its global feedback loop. Call it domestic TikTok: the bottle’s the same, but the contents came from a different vineyard.
How Will This Affect Advertisers?
LinkedIn’s using creator-led video to shake up B2B marketing. Real voices cut through in a sea of AI, and even in B2B, people want authenticity not ads. But here’s the catch: chasing trends could blur the platform’s primary mission as a destination for professional networking. Advertisers don’t just want to be where the crowds are, they want lots of individual user data they can use to calibrate their targeting. What does it profit a social platform to gain viewers if it loses the conversation?
What’s The Bigger Picture?
Whenever ownership shifts to a major consortium, there’s always a push to reduce volatility. A predictable, accountable, controllable TikTok is more profitable than one that’s forever stoking controversy. Good for its new owners? In the short term, definitely. Good for advertisers? That’s a little more complicated. Less chaos = less creativity. Brands will still get impressions, but they could lose the spark. The ability to ride trends, attach to authentic voices, and reach audiences in the wild is what made TikTok exciting territory for advertisers in the first place.
What’s Our Read?
5 out of 10
Expect more of a slow fade than a sudden makeover. Over the months to come, expect to see fewer strange breakouts, more recycled trends, more creators chasing proven formulas. Advertisers who are looking for a little more brand safety and compliance will rightfully welcome this. But keep in mind people came to TikTok because it was the escape from safer platforms. If it turns into everything its audience tried to leave behind, they’ll move on to the next wild frontier.
