Unlike your typical bucket-scraping rattlebag of audio oddities thrown together to con extra cash from grieving fans, this record feels complete and cohesive

With TikTok’s fate in the U.S. dangling between the Supreme Court and President-elect Donald Trump, competitors are moving in to try and claim its ad dollars.

Snapchat, for example, isn’t holding back. In recent pitches to marketers, the app’s ad sales team has highlighted the notable audience overlap between Snapchat and TikTok in the U.S., both on a daily and monthly basis, according to two slides shared with Digiday.

The first slide shows Snapchat’s claim that 60% of U.S. users over the age of 18 also use TikTok daily, while the second slide highlights that 77% of Snapchat’s U.S. users aged 18 or over use TikTok monthly. Both slides strongly indicate that anyone seeking a possible replacement could at least find a majority of their TikTok users over on Snapchat.

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As Discord’s budding romance with brands and advertisers continues, the platform has hired its first-ever chief business officer to scale up its sales and partnership business.

Jules Shumaker, Discord’s new CBO, comes to the company with over two decades of gaming advertising experience. Most recently, she served as CRO of Unity between 2021 and 2024; prior to Unity, she worked as a vp of advertising for the game publisher Zynga. Her first day as Discord’s CBO was Jan. 6.

Shumaker’s entrance comes at an opportune time for Discord. Having established itself as the gaming community’s dominant text and voice chat platform, the company hired a team of experienced platform and gaming executives to launch its first ad product, Play Quests, in March 2024. In October of last year, Discord launched its second ad product, Video Quests. Both are rewarded ad formats — ads that give users an in-app reward in exchange for their engagement and attention — that prompt Discord users to play a certain game or engage in other activities to receive on-platform digital prizes such as profile-picture overlays.

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The impending U.S. TikTok ban could threaten some creators’ ability to grow their audiences across all platforms — not just the embattled Chinese-owned short-form video app.

As the United States marches toward a TikTok ban on Jan. 19, livestreaming creators in particular are lamenting the potential death of the platform’s so-called “clipping culture,” which they believe had an uplifting effect on their followings on both TikTok and other platforms.

“TikTok is pretty commonly used now for Twitch growth,” said Gappy, a Twitch streamer who asked to keep his real name private. “When we think of the new age of Twitch streamers — Kai Cenat, CaseOh, Jynxzi — they all got their virality through TikTok.”

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Telcos and ad tech: the media world’s messiest on-again, off-again relationship. T-Mobile’s $600 million cash swoop for outdoor ad specialist Vistart is the latest reunion in this turbulent love story.

Slated to close this spring pending approval, its ad tech’s first notable deal of the year arrives as outdoor advertising cements itself as the sector’s rising star.

What truly stands out, though, is the deja vu. The bit where hundreds of millions, if not billions of dollars, exchange hands only to come crashing down years later? Haven’t we seen this movie before?

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• The Chinese foreign ministry says Vice President Han Zheng will attend Donald Trump's inauguration.
• The Trump team said in December that it had invited Chinese leader Xi Jinping, but Xi will not attend.
• Foreign heads of state do not usually attend US presidential inaugurations.

China's foreign ministry says it is sending Vice President Han Zheng to attend President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration on January 20.

The Trump transition team said last month that it had invited China President Xi Jinping to the event. The move came as a surprise given that foreign heads of state usually do not attend US presidential inaugurations.

"China follows the principles of mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation in viewing and growing its relationship with the United States," the Chinese foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday morning local time announcing Han's attendance.

"We stand ready to work with the new US government to enhance dialogue and communication, properly manage differences, expand mutually beneficial cooperation, jointly pursue a stable, healthy and sustainable China-US relationship and find the right way for the two countries to get along with each other," the statement added.

The White House, Trump's transition team, the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, and the Chinese foreign ministry did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider.

US-China relations have long remained tenuous ever since Trump's first term. Both the Trump and Biden administrations had imposed crippling tariffs on China.

In May, President Joe Biden announced an increase in tariffs on Chinese exported steel, aluminium, medical products and electric vehicles.

Those tariffs could be ratcheted up even further when Trump takes office. The president-elect said during his campaign that he plans to impose tariffs of more than 60% on Chinese goods entering the US.

In November, Trump said he plans to impose an additional 10% import tariff on Chinese goods unless China does more to curb the inflow of fentanyl into the US.

In January, Trump said in an interview with conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that his representatives have been speaking to Xi's staff.

"I had a great relationship with President Xi. It was very solid, very strong, very friendly. He's a strong man, a powerful man," Trump told Hewitt in an interview that aired on January 6.

"He's certainly revered in China, but they are having problems and I think we will probably get along very well, I predict, but you know it's got to be a two-way street," Trump added.