Las Vegas is kind of an ideal backdrop to survey marketing and media executives about the state of the ad market. Advertising is ultimately gambling after all.

During this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Sin City, executives from brands, agencies and media companies, including Havas, Mastercard, NBCUniversal and Stagwell, revealed where they are placing their chips in 2025 — as well as the bets they would expect to fold this year.

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Jan. 20 has arrived, and Congress’ ultimatum for ByteDance to sell TikTok or face a U.S. ban has come and gone without resolution. Neither a sale or a ban came to fruition. Instead, TikTok lives on, thanks to President-elect Donald Trump’s pledge to stall the federal crackdown on the app with an executive order. 

He made the announcement just hours after major app stores had yanked the app, and TikTok went dark for U.S. users as a federal law kicked in on Sunday. In a post on X, the short-form video app assured users it was in “agreement with our service providers, TikTok is in the process of restoring service.”

What was supposed to be a decisive chapter in this long-running saga has, true to form, delivered more confusion than clarity. Questions linger, answers remain scarce.

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The sun rose on Jan. 20, and despite U.S. Congress’ ultimatum for ByeDance to sell TikTok or face a U.S. ban, TikTok is still alive and kicking. A last-minute lifeline from President-elect Donald Trump has left its fate dangling, not decided. 

What’s next? A labyrinth of political wrangling that leaves skeptics wondering if TikTok’s future in one of its largest markets is any less murky than it was six years ago when the first doubts were cast.

But for marketers, this limbo doesn’t mean their prep work was for nothing. While the immediate storm may have passed, the effort was far from wasted — it’s just on pause. If anything, the real takeaway here is to embrace uncertainty: preparation isn’t optional, it’s essential. Plan for the worst-case scenario, but an eye out for the best.

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There was a time, not too long ago, when CMOs started to sound a lot more political. They made statements about brand purpose. They pulled funding from fake news. They held advertiser boycotts — more than once. They were operating, it seemed during Donald Trump’s first presidency, from a position of power in which what they said and how they spent their ad dollars could help shape the cultural climate.

This may not be the case Trump’s second time around. The cultural landscape has shifted. Marketers have watched major brands — not just Bud Light, but McDonald’s, Planet Fitness and others — grapple with boycotts of their own. They’ve seen the likes of Harley Davidson and John Deere about-face on diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives amid pressure from activist investor Robby Starbuck. They’ve dealt with legal action questioning brand safety and pushing back against their ability to boycott a platform. They’ve seen GARM shuttered. And they’re currently in wait-and-see mode with Meta to understand how its position on censorship will affect them.

The CMO during a Trump presidency in 2025 won’t be the same as in 2017. It’s unlikely that CMOs will be seen making statements about marketing as a force for good or announcing they’re pulling funding from a platform or making any moves that could be seen as overtly political. (Though, arguably, not doing so could also be considered its own political move.) This time around, while of course it will vary from one CMO to another, it seems that CMOs in general will focus on getting back to the basics of marketing and focus intently on their own customers rather than making any big statements.

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Last week saw not one but two high-profile AI legal battles under the spotlight, with updates in separate copyright cases against Meta and OpenAI.

Court documents unsealed in an AI copyright case against Meta raised new questions about the use of e-books from a book piracy site Library Genesis (LibGen). They also raise new questions about how much CEO Mark Zuckerberg and other Meta execs knew about Meta teams’ use of pirated content to help train its Llama models. 

Court documents allege Meta employees sought to remove copyright information — including headers and other identifiers — from various materials. One filing shows an internal Meta document with a suggestion to remove lines containing words like “ISBN,” “copyright,” and “all rights reserved.” Another filing includes messages between employees talking about the desire to compete with other AI rivals, including beat OpenAI’s GPT-4 while also describing French rival Mistral as “peanuts.”

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They say the only constant is change, and that couldn’t be more true of the 2025 national advertising marketplace, as the U.S. experiences a new administration that seems both familiar and uncertain, and as major platforms’ and publishers’ futures adopt new stances or hang in the balance. 

Meantime, a mini-version of musical chairs has beset the national investment teams at a handful of holding companies — the latest change at GroupM, where Matt Sweeney is leaving his post as U.S. chief investment officer. GroupM didn’t respond to requests for information about Sweeney’s replacement. 

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Over three decades of expansion, Amazon has displaced countless smaller businesses in the sectors it targeted, from bookshops to main street retailers. 

In its latest retail initiative, however, the tech titan wants to be a big brother to smaller businesses that want their cut of the retail media gold rush – lowering the barrier to entry for companies previously priced out of $54.85 billion spent on retail media last year, according to eMarketer stats.

Through the Amazon Retail Ad Service the company is offering to provide (at a cost) its retail media ad tech stack to retail brands that lack the scale or resources to build out their own systems. 

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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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Chad Schulte, senior vice president of agency partnerships and strategy, Seedtag

In this time of unprecedented access to information, it’s crucial objective journalism remains a cornerstone of an informed and functional society. However, as modern news organizations grapple with increasing financial pressures, a troubling trend has emerged: advertisers’ over-reliance on blunt-object keyword-blocking measures.

These practices are designed to shield brands from content deemed controversial or unsafe but unintentionally undermine the viability of a healthy and functioning news media. At the heart of this issue is a misunderstanding of how the public views advertising in the context of news. Rather than associating brands with negativity, readers often trust brands more when their advertisements appear alongside professional journalism.

Broad ad-blocking strategies discourage coverage of complex topics

The financial strain on news organizations is a longstanding public affair, some of which is self-inflicted. With digital advertising now the dominant revenue stream for news outlets, applying certain brand-safety practices has led to the widespread demonetization of critical news topics. Words like conflict, crisis, protest and even election often trigger automated ad-blocking algorithms, depriving articles on these topics of revenue opportunities.

The implications are profound: Newsrooms face financial disincentives to report on complex issues that require public attention.

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We want to hear your thoughts on the potential TikTok ban. Take our brief survey.

For years, TikTok creators have been trying to migrate their audiences onto other platforms — but were relatively subtle about their efforts, both due to fears that TikTok’s algorithm suppresses attempts to move users off the app and because of TikTok users’ distaste toward manipulative content.

But now, as the U.S. forges ahead with its TikTok ban that’s approaching a Jan. 19 deadline, creators have gone mask-off, growing more proactive and more explicit with their attempts to divert fans off of TikTok as a ban or sale becomes a likely reality. Even though moving followers over onto another social network isn’t easy, it shouldn’t immediately disrupt many brand deals.

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Digiday’s events are getting a refresh under the leadership of Liz Pitonyak, who joined the company as general manager of events in December.

She joined Digiday Media with 15 years of experience in event strategy and partnership, after most recently directing event initiatives at Adweek and at Forbes. She will oversee events for Digiday, Glossy, Modern Retail and WorkLife.

“I have dedicated my career to creating transformative experiences that resonate with target audiences, amplify brand stories and deliver measurable business outcomes,” Pitonyak said.

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This story originally published on sister site, WorkLife.

WPP’s announcement requiring employees to return to the office four days a week has sent shockwaves through the advertising industry, spotlighting a deepening divide between corporate-owned and independent agencies on workplace flexibility. While some leaders argue in-person collaboration fuels creativity, critics view the move as outdated and morale-crushing.

Employees have voiced frustration over the abrupt policy from the agency holding group, citing poor communication and personal challenges, with some questioning whether “creative collaboration” outweighs childcare needs or two-hour commutes. Meanwhile, independents see an opportunity to attract disillusioned talent championing flexible models that balance productivity with personal well-being.

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Entire direct-to-consumer empires have been built on the back of paid social and search advertising. But empires have to think about the long term to last.

With platforms such as Facebook and Instagram becoming more expensive and quite possibly less brand safe, Comcast hopes to tempt away DTC advertisers from those performance-focused channels and lead them toward TV and CTV inventory. Its execs hope a new ad sales platform, Universal Ads, could help convert performance marketers into long-term brand builders.

It’s a move many DTC and SME brands would welcome, according to eight media buyers working with DTC clients that spoke with Digiday. That said, it doesn’t mean a shift in DTC spend to TV is a fait accompli.

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This week’s Media Briefing features an interview with Dotdash Meredith’s chief innovation officer, Jon Roberts. We discuss what the company has learned nearly nine months into its deal with OpenAI and what he wants to develop with AI technology at the company this year.

• Q&A with Dotdash Meredith on AI agenda in 2025
• Media companies prepare for legal battles with Trump administration, Fortune retracts bogus story and more

Q&A with Dotdash Meredith on AI agenda in 2025

Dotdash Meredith has ambitious plans for the development of its AI-powered technology in 2025. 

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In advertising circles, a quiet theory has been gaining traction: The Trade Desk, it’s said, isn’t exactly enamored with curation — a targeting strategy that could redirect valuable ad spend elsewhere. This week’s acquisition of Sincera added fuel to the narrative. But The Trade Desk has dismissed the rumors outright.

As vp of inventory development Will Doherty put it plainly: “We don’t think a lot about curation.”

Instead, the deal, according to Doherty, is aimed at something far more ambitious. 

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Brian Tomasette, director of product, Amazon DSP

The amount of change and number of challenges that marketers faced in 2024 was head-spinning. From uncertainty about third-party identifiers to the chaos of ever-changing privacy rules, brands, agencies and technology partners like Amazon have had to rethink, adapt and innovate to reach audiences wherever they are — and now, they are everywhere. Not only has the consumer path-to-purchase expanded — most people use at least 20 touchpoints before making a decision — but their attention spans have shrunk. It’s a double whammy that has led marketers to find new ways to connect with their audience and increase relevancy across the marketing funnel.


Between the fast pace of business, constant technological advances and ongoing privacy changes, it’s becoming more difficult to understand the impact of advertising dollars across channels and devices. 

To solve this challenge, marketers who leverage unique customer signals to reach their most relevant audiences at scale can significantly impact campaign outcomes. However, deploying a full-funnel strategy incorporating both has been a challenge.

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Charlie Swift, general manager, Adstra Services

The term performance marketing is hardly new, however, in the 2020s, the tactics and tools marketers use to achieve performance have evolved considerably, necessitating an update to how the industry understands the practice. 

This practice is about getting the most out of marketing spend by doing more with each dollar, rather than restricting how much is spent — performance marketing needs some nuance.

Analyzing the seven stages of development reveals where many people practicing performance marketing typically stop and how they can move far beyond and become marketing masters.

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