It’s been a busy few days in U.S. politics, from Donald Trump’s tech-CEO-studded presidential inauguration, the declaration of a “border emergency,” and the revoking of federal DEI guidelines.

Amidst all this, America’s 47th POTUS found time to sign an executive order instructing the attorney general’s office to delay by 75 days enforcing a Supreme Court ruling that banned TikTok in the U.S. effective Jan 19.

When the deadline hit, TikTok went dark nationwide, revoking access to 170 million U.S. users and some of its biggest advertisers. However, within hours, the app was promptly turned back on.

If you think you’ve got whiplash, spare a thought for the social media managers who worked overtime this past weekend trying to make sense of the ban and update their followers.

Scroll down to see how brands reacted on TikTok to the Supreme Court’s flip-flop, using surreal humor, trending audio, and more to keep up with the conversation.

Bubble Skincare

Gen Z favorite Bubble Skincare, which has relied heavily on TikTok to build a community and compete with bigger, more established brands, initially directed followers toward its Instagram account when the ban briefly took effect.

On Sunday, it posted a jubilant comeback video when news broke that TikTok was back in business.

Carnival

Last week, Carnival showed its crew flocking to TikTok alternative RedNote. It quickly reacted to the news of the reversal with a funny and awkward video using the ‘Hey, how ya’ll doin’?’ sound from Little Women of Atlanta.

Chipotle

Chipotle took a trip through the archives, sharing a 10-year-old video of the viral “Chipotle is my life” kid before TikTok’s short-lived ban. It also revealed all the admins who make the magic on its tongue-in-cheek account.

Crocs

Crocs really said: “It’s not goodbye, it’s see you on [Instagram] Reels,” delivering a montage of the brand’s finest TikTok moments set to sad music. It’s yet to comment on TikTok’s surprise return.

Duolingo

TikTok darling Duolingo, which saw its Mandarin courses grow 216% last week as Americans switched to Chinese alternative RedNote, tackled the prospect of a ban with its signature unhinged humor.

It unmasked its popular green owl mascot, Duo, before hinting at a little regret over that decision once TikTok was reinstated.

E.l.f Cosmetics

E.l.f Cosmetics has become known for its quick-hit reactions to buzzworthy topics on TikTok, from capitalizing on the chatter around the Wicked press tour to getting involved in the “Hot Girl Walk” trend.

Its reaction to a TikTok ban was no different, throwing itself in the ring as a potential buyer (armed with a suitcase of makeup) and using the moment to promote its Power Grip primer. We wouldn’t expect anything less.

Jack in the Box

Jack in the Box’s absurd and slightly scary mascot bid farewell to fans over the weekend, departing with a promise to see them on RedNote. The fast-food brand also used the trending awkward ‘Hey! How Ya’ll Doin’?’ sound upon the app’s return.

The North Face

The North Face took a trip down memory lane of its most memorable TikTok moments, including the time it delivered rain gear via helicopter to a woman in New Zealand following a complaint on the platform.

The outdoor brand urged TikTokers to take inspiration from its brand slogan: “Never Stop Exploring.”

Target

Target created a funny, movie-style epilogue for its TikTok mascots, imploring its 3 million followers to stay connected on other social channels. Little did it know that Red Ball, Bullseye, and Art the Cart would be back on the small screen within 16 hours.

Wendy’s

Followers can always count on Wendy’s for a slightly snarky, irreverent take on the news of the day, and the TikTok ban was no different.

“Gone but never forgotten until I forget in like two weeks,” the chain wrote under a memorial-style video that shared its biggest moments on the platform from 2019 through to now.

Keep up with ADWEEK’s rolling coverage of the (now paused) TikTok ban here.

Back in the 2010s, journalists and the legacy media outlets that employed them famously pivoted to video on digital platforms like Facebook and Twitter. In 2020, they pivoted to TikTok. As the world went into lockdown amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, the platform saw its audience skyrocket. And those incoming viewers proved particularly hungry for news—a hunger that news organizations and independent journalists alike were ready to feed.

But that feast appears ready to give way to famine. On Jan. 19, TikTok will likely go dark due to a bipartisan law passed by Congress mandating its sale from the China-owned ByteDance company. The Supreme Court issued a ruling on Friday upholding that law, which effectively bans TikTok in the U.S.

While news organizations themselves are likely to respond to the loss of TikTok by simply finding the next social media platform to share their content, the ban’s impact will be keenly felt among the writers and reporters who have integrated the platform—and its audience—into their storytelling. TVNewser spoke with three journalists about how they’ve used TikTok to build their audience and how they’re preparing for a post-TikTok media landscape.

Dave Jorgenson, senior video reporter for The Washington Post

As The Washington Post’s self-styled “Tik Tok Guy” (a label he proudly includes in his Bluesky bio), Dave Jorgensen remembers when he had to almost forcibly persuade his newsroom colleagues to join him on-camera back in 2020. “They had no idea what TikTok was,” he recalls with a laugh. “Maybe their reference was their nephew, but that was it.”

Nowadays, though, he has more booking requests than he can handle. “I can’t say yes to everyone,” he sighs, adding that he’s the go-to sounding board for Post journalists looking to experiment with social video on their own. “I do the best I can while still getting sleep!”

Being an early TikTok adopter helped Jorgenson build a dedicated audience that tune in for his humor-laden takes on news, as well as ongoing in-jokes and storylines involving expense reports and his resemblance to Vice President-elect JD Vance. (For the record, he’s not the Hillbilly Elegy author.) As the overseer of the so-called “Washington Post TikTok cinematic universe,” Jorgenson has seen his own TikTok account grow to over 52,000 followers, while the Washington Post boasts 1.8 million.

Now, as he waits to see what Jan. 19 might bring, Jorgenson says that he’s “at peace” with the idea that all those followers may scatter should the ban go forward. “It’s completely out of my control. But I’m excited as a reporter to cover it—this has actually been one of our highest-traffic weeks ever.”

Jorgenson and his video team at the post had already been seeding their content on other platforms long before the TikTok ban became a tangible reality. In fact, YouTube Shorts has emerged as a more reliable performer for the Post than TikTok in the past few months. But Jorgenson says that they’re playing to a different audience on that platform.

“In terms of age demographics, it’s similar,” he notes, referring to the younger audiences that news organizations are eager to reach. “But if a story takes off on TikTok, it becomes a thing of its own, whereas YouTube doesn’t necessarily have that kind of culture.”

Another thing that eases Jorgenson’s mind is that even if TikTok goes away, journalism’s vertical video era is here to stay—at least for now. “There are options out there, and other apps that desperately want to be the next TikTok. My main worry is to figure out where the audience ends up because I don’t want to miss out on the fun.”

Heather Gardner, HeatherGTV and The American Resolution podcast

As an independent journalist who depends on a steady revenue stream from TikTok, Heather Gardner has already felt the impact of TikTok’s looming ban on her bank account.

“I got my first paid advertisement with a client this week for $6,000,” she says candidly. “But then they came back before we signed the contract and said, ‘Oh wait, TikTok’s being banned—we can offer $3,000.’ This has already affected my bottom line.”   

Gardner built her TikTok news business from the ground up in 2020 after stints at such legacy media brands as Entertainment Weekly and HuffPost, where she co-created and hosted the ICYMI video series. Her own brand of independent digital journalism is punchy, impassioned, and informed—a recipe that plays well on TikTok, where she has nearly 400,000 followers who followed her when she attended the Democratic National Convention last summer.

For the record, HeatherGTV also has a presence on Instagram, YouTube, and X, and Gardner has been directing her TikTok audience to follow those accounts after Jan. 19. So far, though, the metrics aren’t suggesting that viewers are listening.

“I’ve had a really hard time pushing people over,” she confesses, adding that Instagram—where she has 113,000 followers—is her preferred platform. “The algorithms are so different, too. If it was the same across all the platforms, I would have the same following on every platform.”

Being hostage to an algorithm or an act of Congress—and the financial strain that entails—is one of the reasons why Gardner is making it a priority in 2025 to build her own news platform that she can monetize. That would free her from relying on platforms owned by self-interested billionaires or international companies that may fall out of favor with whichever administration is currently occupying the Oval Office.

“One of my big focuses this year is growing my podcast, take my content off of social media, and doing more in-person events,” she says. “Basically, I just want to become CNN, but in a very small way! That’s what those of us content creators in the news space are trying to build.”

V Spehar, Under the Desk News

To borrow a line from ABC News, more TikTok-enabled Americans get their news from V Spehar than from any other source. The founder of Under the Desk News has amassed an audience of 3.3 million followers since joining the platform in 2020, and they are certain to be a familiar face to anyone with an active Instagram or YouTube news feed. (Spehar identifies as nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns.)

Their success has provided them with the resources to expand the Under the Desk News staff in recent months. “I started making long-form YouTube content, so I invested in an editor and better video editing equipment,” Spehar says, noting that the Bytedance-owned Capcut video editing app preferred by TikTokers could also be banned. “I understood that to survive this, you would have to be stronger.”

At the same time, they admit to being pessimistic that Instagram or YouTube will make up for the potential loss of TikTok, both financially and in terms of audience reach.

“YouTube is a whole new skill to learn in terms of how to scroll through it—the algorithm doesn’t as quickly adapt to your preferences as TikTok’s did,” Spehar explains. “We are essentially cutting out peoples’ means of communicating and also their economic opportunities. And that’s the thing that gets me choked up.”

Spehar initially launched Under the Desk News, hoping to “professionalize” what a citizen journalist can accomplish in the digital media age. Their coverage includes both national and international news, as well as local stories that might otherwise slip through the cracks. And they pride themselves on being a trusted source of information for viewers who don’t have the time or the means to keep up with the news via “trad media” outlets on cable or in print.

Spehar worries about where those viewers will go—and who they’ll listen to—should TikTok go dark on Jan. 19. “Facebook just got rid of all their fact-checkers,” they note. “X hasn’t been a reliable narrator for some years. TikTok gave them the news they needed.”

Not for nothing, but legacy media outlets may end up missing TikTok as well. “They also rely on the platform for trends, stories, and first-person narratives,” Spehar says. “I’m hoping this helps them recognize that we need each other.”

On Friday (Jan. 17), the Supreme Court upheld a law that will see TikTok banned in the U.S. on Sunday (Jan. 19). The decision leaves creators searching for other platforms to reach their audiences.

For creators like Gigi Robinson, TikTok’s silence on how to prepare for a ban has left them feeling uninformed. Robinson said that just today, TikTok invited her to participate in a TikTok Shop campaign, showing a disconnect between what’s happening politically and how TikTok is operating.

“It makes no sense that there’s no communication or things to prepare for this,” said Robinson, adding there was ample time to address creators about the ban. “If they’re a platform that’s for creators, and for small businesses, why are they not saying anything?”

Amid uncertainty about the platform’s future, TikTok creators have begun to diversify their content by sharing insights on LinkedIn, starting newsletters or websites, and exploring other avenues to establish themselves as thought leaders in their fields.

“It’s going to be a big hit to my networking opportunities, but I’ve been building other platforms and growing a newsletter, so I think I’ll be OK there,” said creator Danielle Bayard Jackson.

Those that haven’t diversified their content will be worse off. “If I’m only a Tiktok creator, what is my agent going to do? Is my agent going to stay with me?” said Jacob Wallach, creator and founder of social media consultancy Social4TheWin.

Others worry it will be difficult to replicate the engagement and income they have been able to find on the platform, especially through TikTok’s Creator program.

“TikTok is the place where culture happens, where trends are made, where songs take off, where books go viral, where people shop,” said Kelsey Chickering, a principal analyst at Forrester.

Holding out hope

Some creators are hopeful that President-elect Donald Trump will save TikTok in the U.S. by temporarily pausing the ban while negotiating a sale with its parent company, ByteDance. Trump is eager to reach a deal and suggested a forced sale of TikTok’s U.S. operations, with creators like Mr. Beast expressing interest in buying the platform.

Christian Brown, CMO and co-founder of influencer marketing platform Glewee, believes TikTok could be sold to a U.S. company between the ban taking effect on Sunday and Trump’s inauguration on Monday. “I think we’re going to see a lot more players come to the table,” he said.

But not everyone is convinced. Creator Paula Carozzo, for instance, believes that ultimately, the final decision rests in the hands of the Supreme Court. “At this point, I’m praying, but I’m not sure what much Trump is going to be able to do,” she said.

While the loss of TikTok has shocked the creator economy, some remain hopeful that there will always be a place to connect with their audiences.

“We’ve seen platforms come and go in the past, and will just have to see what will come next,” said creator Anite Gashumov.

Longtime GroupM executive Matt Sweeney has stepped down from his role, ADWEEK has learned.

Sweeney has been with GroupM since 2014, when he joined the company as senior vice president of client engagement at programmatic trading desk Xaxis. Over his decadelong tenure with the group, he succeeded to CEO of Xaxis and then to chief investment officer in the U.S.

A GroupM spokesperson confirmed his departure.

The executive steps down from the role three months after Brian Lesser took over from Christian Juhl as global CEO of GroupM.

Sweeney’s exit comes as Lesser looks to quickly transform GroupM’s business to be simpler, more collaborative, and more technologically forward.

“The vision is to continue investing in those components, including data, technology, and AI, such that we can drive our clients’ business forward,” he told ADWEEK during an interview at CES in Las Vegas earlier this month.

The news also comes as GroupM has lost major pieces of business in North America in the past two years, including Shell, Kimberly-Clark, General Mills, and Uber. According to COMvergence, GroupM’s client losses in 2024 totaled $3.54 billion in client billings.

On recent earnings calls, WPP CEO Mark Read has pointed to GroupM’s complexity as a challenge in managing clients and attracting new business. The business merged agencies Essence and MediaCom in 2022 to create EssenceMediacom, an agency with 10,000 employees.

“The simplification of GroupM that we started last year is very much a step in the right direction,” Read said on WPP’s Q3 2024 earnings call. “So, it’s very much about the continuation of that process, and I think it’s focused on talent, technology, data, and the product.”

More recently, GroupM won Johnson & Johnson’s U.S. and Canada media accounts and retained the Unilever business in the region.

Prior to his time at GroupM, Sweeney held executive roles at ad tech firms, including Crisp Media and Pixalate. He spent the earlier part of his career on the publisher side.

The NFL is adding Bleacher Report to its team this offseason with a multiyear deal that hopes to turn the Warner Bros. Discovery digital platform’s audience and content, as well as the league’s highlights and sponsors, into a dynasty.

The partnership, which began on NFL Wild Card weekend, gives Bleacher Report and House of Highlights access to NFL game footage for its app, social content, and programming; behind-the-scenes content from league officials, players, and coaches during the season; and on-the-ground behind-the-scenes access and activations for big events, including the NFL Scouting Combine, NFL Draft, and Super Bowl.

Now, if, say, Dallas Cowboys linebacker Micah Parsons—who currently discusses various events in the NFL and college football week on his Bleacher Report video podcast, The Edge—wants to recap a game and break down specific moments, he can use highlights with the league’s blessing.

“[Using highlights] just brings the fan that much closer to the player’s perspective,” said Bennett Spector, general manager at Bleacher Report.

While Bleacher Report will be able to use those highlights across properties like Parsons’ show, San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Deebo Samuel’s Cleats and Convos, and other programming, becoming an official content partner of the NFL allows the TNT Sports property to work more closely with official NFL sponsors. Though league insurance partner Nationwide already sponsors Parsons’ show, Bleacher Report sees the opportunity to build new content franchises around its league access while providing the NFL and its brand allies the opportunity to reach a younger, more digital audience.

“Having official partnership helps them have a better and stronger conversation with some of our partners, who have already decided, ‘OK, we’re going to attach ourselves to the NFL,’” said Brent Lawton, vp of business development and strategic investments at the NFL. “Being able to go and do that on their platform with official content helps bring the pieces of the puzzle together.”

Reaching the goal line

In the Bleacher Report/NFL deal, both sides of the ball are making a play for expanded reach.

From the NFL’s perspective, Bleacher Report is a large, established digital audience that skews a bit younger than the NFL average but is specifically interested in sports. They’re an established presence with an audience that’s already aware of the NFL, even if they aren’t actively watching games, playing in fantasy leagues, or betting each week.

“While it might not necessarily be somebody that’s new to the NFL going to Bleacher Report, it’s somebody who cares about the game and wants to follow along,” Lawton said. “If we can reach them and help Bleacher Report tell better stories or enhance their content with official content, then that’s great.”

It’s a deal that comes at an interesting time for both the NFL and sports in general. While the league still accounts for the overwhelming majority of the most-watched broadcasts, ratings for the latest Wild Card games declined more than 9% from a year ago.

It isn’t just an NFL issue, as college football’s playoffs saw a 17% decline in ratings during the first year of their 12-team playoff format. Heading into the end of 2024, ratings were declining in the NBA (19%-25%), men’s college basketball (21%), women’s college games (38%), and the NHL (28%). Bleacher Report and parent company Warner Bros. Discovery—which found itself at the center of NBA broadcast rights talks last year—want to invest where those viewers are.

“WBD has signaled consistently that they want to be in sports and are doing so by investing in these new properties that have come online,” Spector said. “What has changed is not that there is a lack of interest in sports proper. It’s just how people are consuming those very same products. While linear television has shown a clear decline in consumption, digital-first consumption—be it through highlights either on social media or through our properties—is growing rapidly.”

Spector, TNT Sports, and WBD did not say how much was invested in the Bleacher Report-NFL deal, but it’s already had an effect on Bleacher Report coverage. Within its first three days, highlights distributed on the app received “tens of millions of views,” highlights have been added to Parsons’ show, and yet-unnamed sponsors have signed up for highlights packages later in the season.

Parsons will be hosting a show live from Super Bowl 59 in New Orleans, Samuel will be on Radio Row just before the game, and the crew from House of Highlights will meet with players, ask questions, and create content on-site. While yet-unnamed sponsors have signed up for highlights packages, Bleacher Report’s stance is “money will follow” if you find your audience first.

“With this deal coming online, we can say outright and very loudly and proudly that we have full coverage and comprehensive coverage across every major sports league in the United States,” Spector said. “That’s going to be very powerful as we go into work with the advertising community—if you have dollars to spend and you are trying to reach young sports fans, no matter the subject, we have an avenue for you to attach your brand to ours.”

The long game

Parsons kicked off the NFL postseason for Bleacher Report by saying that his Cowboys—who haven’t made the Super Bowl since 1995 and went 7-10 this season—would be Super Bowl champions in 2025.

Somehow, that wasn’t the highlight of his 2024 season on The Edge, as his nearly four and a half hours of NFL Draft coverage with friend and Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud drew the attention of fans and media peers alike. As Bleacher Report looks to expand its presence through its NFL partnerships, it’s hoping that combining its hundreds of millions of online followers with NFL-approved brand partners will supercharge the process that made Parsons a media personality in the middle of an active NFL career.

“Our draft show is one that we’ve always prided ourselves on: That you actually get to be with Micah Parsons when they are making the Cowboys pick, and you get to see how he reacts,” Spector said. “C.J. Stroud is another one who we’ve been investing in and has been working with us, so getting closer to the action and hearing directly from the athletes is going to be big for us.”

The NFL’s Lawton noted that Bleacher Report’s presence in college football already provides it tremendous access to football players early in their careers. As those players head into the NFL, Lawton said the platform is uniquely positioned to tell their stories and provide behind-the-scenes interviews, outtakes, and other content. 

The NFL sees Bleacher Report as a credible, knowledgeable source with a different point of view than, perhaps, NFL media or broadcast partners. As the NFL audience evolves and NFL fans aren’t necessarily just in the stands or watching on game day, those personality traits matter.

“People go there because they respect that voice and want to hear it,” Lawton said. “A partnership allows us to be there as well and help deliver for our fans.”

Snap is reminding creators that its app is a central place to build a community in a new ad campaign.

The company’s campaign comes as rival TikTok faces a potential ban in the U.S. this week. The Supreme Court is set to rule on a looming ban that would wipe the app from the U.S. market, impacting 170 million users. The saga is ongoing, as TikTok’s defense of free speech has clashed with the government’s security concerns about the Chinese-owned app.

Snap’s ad campaign launched on Jan. 15, with messaging that encourages users to “find their favorites on Snapchat.” The ad stars creators like Savannah Demers, Avani Gregg, Harry Jowsey, and Loren Gray. 

Some of these creators first developed an audience on TikTok. Gregg, for example, won a Shorty Award in 2019 for TikToker of the Year. 

“You can catch all of my day-to-day content on Snapchat,” Gregg says in one of the campaign’s spots. “I feel like Snapchat brings me closer to you guys. It’s an easy way to connect with you guys on a more personal level.”

Snap says that creators make 15 billion interactions with their followers each day on Snapchat.

New tools for creators

The campaign also promotes new tools the company recently rolled out for creators.

In September, Snapchat introduced a feature that allows creators to toggle between their personal and business accounts. The company also released new tools that allow creators to pin content and utilize templates for content production.

Additionally, starting next month, some creators can get their hands on new tools that place ads in Spotlight videos that are longer than one minute. Spotlight is Snap’s TikTok-like feature that surfaces user-generated content.

The number of creators posting content to Snapchat grew 50% year over year during the third quarter of 2023, according to Snap. Additionally, Spotlight reached more than 500 million active users during the third quarter. And time spent watching content on Snapchat was up 25% year over year during that time period.

Snap reports fourth-quarter earnings for 2024 on Feb. 4.

Los Angeles’ local stations saw a spike in viewership when the fires in Pacific Palisades and Altadena started on Tuesday.

Stations went wall-to-wall with coverage. Variety said the local stations saw their normal viewership double and even triple in some cases, especially as the fires began to spread.

According to Nielsen data, market leader KABC (Channel 7) averaged 318,166 viewers for its 6 p.m. newscast on Jan. 7; in the days leading up to Tuesday, the ABC-owned station normally posted an average of 170,769 in the timeslot. The station also saw huge spikes at 4 p.m. (209,421, up from a normal average of 119,190) and 5 p.m. (268,915, up from 140,820).

Nexstar’s CW outlet KTLA (Channel 5) experienced a tremendous viewership increase that evening as well, averaging 212,396 (up from normally 73,036) at 5 p.m. and 282,710 (more than tripling its normal 70,027 viewership) at 6 p.m. NBC-owned KNBC (Channel 4) attracted 130,787 viewers at 5 p.m. (up from its usual average of 70,511) and 123,795 (up from 69,638) at 6 p.m.

CBS-owned KCBS (Channel 2) averaged 93,231 at 5 p.m. (up from 58,165) and 113,180 at 6 p.m. (up from 78,033). And Fox-owned KTTV (Channel 11) averaged 44,891 (up from 30,184) at 5 p.m. and 67,821 (up from 31,016) at 6 p.m.

NBC’s Spanish-language Telemundo outlet KVEA (Channel 52) also saw big lifts, with 218,498 (up from 168,305) at 5 p.m. and 231,777 (up from 201,458) at 6 p.m.

Primetime:

KABC averaged 261,440 viewers from 7 to 11 p.m.

KVEA had 251,194 viewers

KTLA had 215,972 from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m.

KNBC averaged 156,864 in prime

KCBS got 76,839 viewers and KCAL saw 166,320 at 8 p.m. (from its normal average of 111,473) and 193,606 at 9 p.m. (from its usual 104,708).

Late news:

KABC’s 11 p.m. averaged 191,995 (up from 134,753 for the normal half hour)

KTLA saw 200,260 (up from 79,863) at 10 p.m. and 170,008 (up from 61,707) at 11 p.m.; and

KCBS averaged 89,668 (up from 60,148) at 11 p.m. and KCAL averaged 131,474 (up from 85,681) at 10 p.m.

KNBC got 81,916 viewers (up from 66,408) at 11 p.m.

At 10 p.m., KTTV averaged 87,233 (up from 35,198). And at 11 p.m.,

Telemundo station KVEA saw 177,400 (up from 132,752).

Jessica Jensen, who served as Indeed’s CMO since March of 2021, has been named Chief Marketing and Communications Officer for LinkedIn, the company announced today.

Charged with overseeing global marketing, brand and corporate strategy, Jensen will report to COO Dan Shapero when she assumes her new role on January 21.

Jensen replaces Melissa Selcher, who departed LinkedIn—a property of Microsoft—in May, having joined the company in 2016 as VP of corporate communications. Selcher rose to the chief marketer’s post in January of 2020.

A marketing veteran, Jensen has enjoyed a long and varied career. She’s led product marketing for Apple and served as CMO for OpenTable. Jensen’s resume also includes a five-year stint at Facebook, where she served as Head of Platforms, Products and Insights, Business Marketing.

As CMO of job site Indeed, Jensen oversaw brand, communication, product, and acquisition marketing globally. At LinkedIn, her challenges are likely to be similar to—if not larger than—those she faced at her last post. LinkedIn counts 1 billion users and some 65 million people hunt for jobs on the platform every week, compared to Indeed’s “tens of millions” of weekly site visitors.

Jensen comes to LinkedIn at a dynamic period for the company. Its revenues were up 10% for the first quarter of 2025 and, late last year, it rolled out an AI-powered feature called Hiring Assistant. But in October 2023, the company laid off 700 employees, citing “shifts in consumer behavior and slower revenue growth.”

While Jensen may not exactly thrive on chaos, she’s clearly used to it. “I have had the great honor to run global marketing teams for three companies in times of great crisis (Facebook, a food start up, and OpenTable/KAYAK),”she wrote in a LinkedIn post in April 2020. “I have struggled with different elements in each case—and these crises have ranged from financial to political to now a global health pandemic.”

Jensen is also known as an advocate for women in the workplace. “The people that are requiring people to come back to offices are largely white, entitled men, who do not care for children or elderly parents,” she told the Speed of Culture podcast last year. “Women are the major beneficiaries of flexible work and remote work because we are the people who take care of families.”

Jensen earned her B.A. at Amherst College and holds an MBA from the Institut Européen d’Administration des Affaires.

Disney is giving advertisers tiers of joy thanks to its latest ad-supported streaming numbers.

Today, at its 5th annual Tech and Data Showcase at CES, the company’s president of global advertising, Rita Ferro, announced that the company reached an estimated 157 million monthly active users globally, including 112 million domestically, on average per month over the last six months. 

The company noted that those numbers are cumulative across its streaming portfolio. In addition to the numbers, Disney also shared its methodology for the calculations.

“Disney sits at the intersection of world-class sports and entertainment content, with the most high-value audiences in ad-supported global streaming at scale,” Ferro said in a statement. “We wanted to be the first to offer our industry greater transparency into the methodology used to estimate our engaged global ad-supported monthly active users.”

According to the company, the ad-supported MAU numbers are derived from active accounts across Disney’s streaming ecosystem (Disney+, Hulu, and ESPN+) that have viewed ad-supported content continuously for more than 10 seconds. (The company said that estimated active users are added across applications without de-duplication.)

Additionally, each active account is multiplied by the number of estimated users per account—with the global average being 2.6, though that varies by application and region. From there, Disney estimates the total number of users. 

The company also noted that multipliers are determined by first-party survey data representing subscribers in regions with an advertising tier, and its numbers do not include Hotstar.

With the announcement, Disney’s ads plans are currently ahead of Netflix, which told ADWEEK last year its ad tier reached 70 million monthly active users. Meanwhile, Amazon, which rolled out its ad-supported Prime Video tier to all its users last year, claims its monthly ad-supported audience is more than 275 million in the U.S. across its owned and operated properties and third-party publishers.

Speaking with ADWEEK last month about what to expect in the year to come from Disney Advertising, Ferro noted the importance of transparency around monthly active users.

“Consistency around definition is going to be really important because I think some people use subscriber numbers, and some people use account numbers as monthly active users,” Ferro said. “I think that’s the challenge of making sure that we have consistency across all of our platforms—to make sure that we can define what that is and that it is a valid metric for our marketing partners.”

The ads president also said the company was seeing consistent growth across its ads plans, with more than half of new users regularly opting for the ad-supported tiers.

“We know that over 50% of the people who are signing up for Disney+ are choosing the ad tier,” Ferro said. “The number fluctuates, but it’s definitely over 50% consistently on a month-to-month basis.”

The Mouse House is expanding, with Disney combining its Hulu + Live TV business with Fubo, but the streaming TV deal may be about way more than settling a legal battle over Venu Sports.

Today, Disney announced its deal to combine its Hulu + Live TV business with Fubo, creating a combined virtual multichannel video programming distributor (MVPD) company. With the deal, Disney becomes the majority owner of the resulting company, controlling 70% of Fubo. This new combined business is operating under Fubo’s existing management team and the Fubo name, and Fubo and Hulu + Live TV will continue to be available to consumers as separate offerings.

As a result of the deal, Fubo will create a new sports and broadcasting service featuring Disney’s sports and broadcast networks. The combined company will have 6.2 million North American subscribers, reportedly making it the second-largest all-digital TV service after YouTubeTV’s 8 million.

Notably, Fubo had been engaged in a legal battle against Disney, Fox, and Warner Bros. Discovery over the launch of their proposed combined MVPD, Venu Sports, which Fubo claimed was anti-competitive. Now, all the litigation between the companies has been settled.

According to a statement from Disney, at signing of the transaction, Disney, Fox, and WBD will make an aggregate cash payment of $220 million to Fubo. In addition, Disney has committed to provide a $145 million term loan to Fubo in 2026 as part of the transaction.

Following the deal annoucement, Fubo’s stock surged 200%, according to reports.

“Fubo won concessions from its lawsuit in an indirect way,” Ross Benes, senior analyst at eMarketer, told ADWEEK. “Going after Venu contributed to a merger with Hulu.”

Disney, Fox, and WBD originally planned to launch Venu last year, but Fubo’s lawsuit halted those plans. With the lawsuit dropped, Venu has a seemingly smooth runway for a launch, and Fubo is expected to serve as a reseller of Venu Sports, according to reporting from The Desk.

Venu Sports did not immediately reply to a request for comment.

What happens next

In a constantly changing TV landscape, analysts told ADWEEK there’s more going on than just the legal issues being put to rest.

“Running a virtual cable service has proven unprofitable, even for the most successful products,” Benes said. “The culling of vMVPDs began with Playstation Vue and will continue.”

Benes noted that Hulu’s Live TV offering began under different ownership. (Disney reached an $8.6 billion deal with Comcast in 2023 to fully acquire Hulu.) Now, this new deal allows Disney to further offload being a pay-TV operator.

“Disney may be the majority shareholder of this new entity, but having it publicly traded as ‘Fubo’ and run by Fubo management gives the impression that they will explore offloading their pay-TV operator asset eventually,” Benes said.

Whether or not Disney eventually offloads Fubo, 2025 is only a few days in, so more consolidation and mergers are certainly on the way, according to experts.

“The consolidation of cable networks and the rise of new consumer bundles will take center stage in 2025,” Matt Sweeney, chief investment officer, GroupM US, recently told ADWEEK when reflecting on the topics that will dominate the TV industry this year. “Expect streamlined packages that combine must-watch content—sports, reality TV, scripted shows, and premium on-demand options.”

And as more deals get brokered with TV increasingly moving online, consumer confusion will follow, according to Mike Proulx, vice president and research director at Forrester.

“The rise of virtual MVPDs as an alternative (and eventual replacement) to cable and satellite TV seems at odds with core streaming services like Netflix and Prime Video aggressively brokering live programming deals,” Proulx said. “All of this means higher aggregate costs for consumers as they piecemeal together their television lineups in what seems like a never-ending game of whack-a-mole.”