In a case with far-reaching implications for the future of social media, the Supreme Court today reviewed oral arguments on a federal law that could force TikTok to shut down in the U.S. in about nine days unless the app severs ties with its Chinese parent company, ByteDance. The oral arguments lasted nearly three hours.

The Court reviewed two consolidated cases challenging the law—one filed by TikTok and ByteDance, and another brought by TikTok content creators. At the heart of the case is a clash between TikTok’s defense of free speech and national security concerns raised by the feds.

Arguing on behalf of TikTok was Noel Francisco, with Jeffrey Fisher representing the content creators. Elizabeth Prelogar appeared for the government.

Justices appeared skeptical of TikTok’s arguments, probing how its First Amendment rights apply when the law specifically targets the foreign-owned ByteDance and its algorithm. Meanwhile, they pressed the government on its central argument—that the issue lies in the national security risk of “covert” Chinese government manipulation of content and user data collection.

The court is likely to rule by the end of next week, with the decision impacting nearly 170 million American users who use the app.

Here are the key moments from today’s hearing.

TikTok sale isn’t possible

Justice Elena Kagan pressed TikTok’s Francisco on why TikTok couldn’t divest from ByteDance, pointing out that the statute requires only the foreign parent company to divest, leaving TikTok to “do what every actor in the United States can do, which is go find the best available algorithm.”

TikTok has argued that a sale is impossible due to China’s export restrictions on its algorithm and the law’s prohibition on a U.S. version of TikTok collaborating with ByteDance engineers globally.

Jan. 19th: The date TikTok goes dark

Francisco acknowledged that if TikTok loses the case, the app will effectively shut down on Jan. 19.

“It’s essentially going to stop operating,” he said, adding that TikTok would disappear from app stores and service providers wouldn’t be able to support it. Francisco urged the court to grant a preliminary injunction to “buy everyone a little breathing room.”

Cat videos wont topple national security

Fisher argued that the content recommendation algorithm, which controls the videos users see, is unrelated to data security.

“The government itself is here saying ‘national security’…so like a mix of cat videos or dance videos doesn’t affect national security,” said Fisher. He also pointed out that if data security were truly a priority for Congress, it would have regulated Chinese shopping apps like Shein and Temu.

“What is Congress really worried about these dramatic risks leave out an ecommerce sites like Temu that has 70 million Americans using it?” Fisher said.

Shutdown of TikTok = Shutdown of X?

Fisher focused on the issue of ownership, drawing a parallel between a potential TikTok shutdown and a hypothetical scenario where X is forced to shut down due to its current owner Elon Musk. He argued that users who rely on the platform to post and make a living would have a First Amendment claim.

“American creators have a right to work with the publisher of their choice,” he said.

TikTok: The platform of choice for all—even a 2024 presidential candidate

Fisher argued that telling TikTok creators to simply post elsewhere is insufficient. He emphasized that TikTok offers a unique editorial perspective that benefits creators, particularly ordinary Americans, who gain visibility based on the quality of their content, not fame.

“Whether you’re an ordinary American citizen or a presidential candidate in our last election, if you want to reach new and different audiences, TikTok is the place people go,” he said.

Bluesky gets a shout-out

Prelogar argued that the law targets national security threats, specifically the risk of “covert content manipulation by a foreign adversary nation.”

“The covert nature comes from the fact that it’s not apparent that the PRC is behind the scenes, pulling the strings and deciding what content appears,” Prelogar explained.

Justice Kagan questioned, “Because we don’t know that China’s behind it, that’s what covert means?” She pointed out that the identity of China’s involvement is widely known, adding, “That’s true of every search engine, whether it’s X or Bluesky—none of these are apparent. They’re all black boxes.”

Looming uncertainty over a potential U.S. TikTok ban is not putting off advertisers from committing ad spend to the platform. In fact, agencies are pledging a year-over-year increase in ad dollars in 2025.

One agency executive, speaking anonymously to protect industry relations, plans to increase the agency’s TikTok spend by 20%–30% this year. DigiShopGirl Media will increase spend by between 15%–18% over the year, according to CEO Katya Constantine. At VML, clients are boosting their yearly influencer budgets on TikTok by 30-50%. Some brands are committing for the entire year, while others are focusing on the first half of the year or maintaining a steady stream of ad-hoc campaigns throughout, according to Mae Karwowski, CEO of Obviously, VML’s influencer marketing agency.

U.S. ad spend on TikTok is projected to surge 57% YoY in the first two months of 2025, according to ad data firm Guideline, based on forward booking data from agency partners for upcoming campaigns. And TikTok has been growing: Since 2020, TikTok has posted an annual compound growth rate (CAGR) of 118%, rising from 2% to 20% of total U.S. social ad spend, per Guideline.

“TikTok is still pushing agencies and brands to commit to increased YoY spend through up-front deals, and they are still selling up-front media placements well into 2025,” the first agency executive said. “TikTok has confirmed in writing, although not in contracts, that they will honor refunds for reserved inventory if the app is shut down.”

Despite regulatory uncertainty, TikTok’s ad revenue trajectory highlights the platform’s resilience. Advertisers are making commitments for 2025, drawn by TikTok’s ability to drive engagement and sales, especially among younger audiences.

“A lot of it is net new created ad budgets towards TikTok because it’s created a pocket of success within their business,” the first agency executive said.

The looming U.S. TikTok ban, set for January 19, mandates app stores like Google and Apple to remove TikTok. However, the bill does not specify a timeline for fully shutting down the app itself, creating a “fragile couple of weeks for agencies and advertisers,” the executive notes. Without app store access, the app will not receive updates and will eventually become so buggy to be unusable.

As brands navigate uncertainty, many are also hedging their bets with contingency plans. Some aren’t fully convinced by TikTok’s lack of refund commitments in contracts, which adds to the hesitancy to commit to upfront ad inventory.

Some are hesitant to commit to upfront ad inventory

Brands are showing “noticeable hesitation” in immediately committing to up-front ad inventory or reserving ad space before the actual campaign runs, according to the first executive. This is resulting in spend commitments being booked closer to the campaign running. Fewer ad dollars have been reserved for February compared to last year. While key ad inventory for major events like the Super Bowl and Oscars has been booked, demand is softer for random days in between these events, particularly for top-view and takeover ads, which require upfront payment to secure future spots.

TikTok does appear to still be filling its spring and early summer inventory, with some brands reserving as late as July, this source said.

“Some brands have asked for explicit language [from TikTok] that says, ‘if the app does not exist in the United States, we get a refund and we’ll get it at this time’” the executive said. “And that hasn’t come yet.”

TikTok did not respond to a media request.

Contingency plans and how agencies will redirect budgets

The first agency, which established its contingency plan in November last year and plans to implement it by the end of January, is advising brands to reinvest 80% of their TikTok ad budget, spanning performance, ecommerce, and brand marketing, to other channels.

For commerce-focused brands, this reserved budget may shift to platforms like Amazon and Pinterest Shopping. Full-funnel marketing dollars are likely to flow to OTT streaming platforms like Hulu and ESPN under Disney’s portfolio, while performance ad dollars will shift toward Instagram Reels.

Already, 5% of the agency’s clients have begun redirecting budgets away from TikTok since last year.

At DigiShopGirl, the contingency plan involves reallocating 90% of TikTok’s performance ad dollars to Reels, YouTube Shorts, and, to a lesser extent, Snapchat, particularly for brands targeting U.S.-based consumers.

The Justice Department’s effort to bar Americans from access to TikTok—a matter to be argued before the Supreme Court tomorrow—is possibly the most contentious first-amendment case of the social media age.

But it’s not a new one. The United States has enacted widespread bans on publications and information sources in the past, for reasons similar or identical to the ones driving the TikTok action now.

Foremost is national security. The feds argue that the Chinese government enjoys unfettered access to American users’ data (which the app’s owner ByteDance denies). The second is ideology. Proponents of the ban say that TikTok is a pro-communist influence machine that, to quote Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), is “able to control what our young people see and say and think.”

For free-speech proponents, these arguments harken back to the dawn of the internet, to the Cold War, and far earlier than that, when federal lawmakers blocked public access to information and ideas on the grounds they were protecting their own citizens.

“The effect of these restrictions was to limit Americans access to information and ideas and to cause others to doubt our country’s dedication to its ideals—rightly so,” George Wang, staff attorney at Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute, told ADWEEK. “We ended those ill-advised practices, which are now viewed with embarrassment and shame.”

Below is a look back at five of those restrictions in reverse chronological order—and why they were, for the most part, failures.

The Communications Decency Act

What It did: Passed in 1996 to coincide with the exploding popularity of the internet, the CDA was meant to protect Americans under the age of 18 by banning any “comment, request, suggestion, proposal, image or other communication that, in context, depicts or describes, in terms patently offensive as measured by contemporary community standards.”

How it Turned Out: The Supreme Court struck the law down one year later, ruling it to be overly broad in restricting First and Fifth Amendment rights. The CDA would be replaced by the Child Online Protection Act in 1998, but that law too would be struck down several years later, on much the same grounds.

The McCarran-Walter Act

What It did: Passed in 1952 as part of the Red Scare, the law barred individuals with viewpoints “prejudicial to the public interest” from entering the U.S. While the law did not restrict public access to information, it eclipsed public dialogue by refusing entry to writers with socialist sympathies, including Doris Lessing, Graham Greene, and Gabriel García Márquez. President Truman called the law “a step backward.”

How it Turned Out: The law ended with the Immigration Act of 1965, which no longer scrutinized ideological viewpoints before permitting immigration.

The Office of Censorship

What It did: During WWII, the federal government severely restricted all war-related news in newspapers and radio. Reporters were instructed to avoid topics that might damage morale at home and skew their stories to focus on victory and heroism.

How it Turned Out: The censored news coverage led to a degree of apathy on the home front that the government realized was damaging the war effort. Two years into the war, the government wound up allowing reporting on the brutality of the war—meaning, accurate reporting.

The Hays Code

What It did: Fearing the government’s move toward banning certain movies as immoral or obscene, Hollywood created this self-censorship body in 1930. It edited scripts and forced the elimination of any scenes that dealt not only with sex and violence but also childbirth, heavy drinking, cursing, interracial relationships, or anything considered anti-Christian, including poking fun at priests and pastors.

How it Turned Out: The coming of TV and the popularity of foreign films meant competition for movies, which loosened up the censorship so it could continue to draw audiences. In 1968, the Hays Code disappeared, replaced by the somewhat gentler moving rating system.

The Trading with the Enemy Act

What It did: Passed when the U.S. entered WWI in 1917, the law gave the president sweeping powers to restrict trade with aggressor nations. These powers included banning books, magazines, newspapers, and movies created in specified countries. Intended as a temporary measure only, the law survived into the Cold War, when it was used to restrict the entry of materials from socialist countries.

How it Turned Out: In 1977, Congress cut back the president’s power to wartime only.

The Comstock Act

What It did: Passed in 1873, it prohibited the Post Office from transporting any “obscene, lewd, or lascivious, and filthy book[s] …. or other mail matter containing any filthy, vile, or indecent thing.” The law didn’t just ban nude pictures, it banned information on sex education and birth control as well. In 1921, Comstock was used to keep James Joyce’s novel Ulysses from bookstores.

How it Turned Out:  Women’s rights and other groups filed enough court challenges (notably Griswold v. Connecticut, which established a right to contraception) to render the law toothless. All but unenforceable in the digital age, the law is still on the books, however, and some worry that it will be used to prohibit the mailing of abortifacient medications.

Meta might have opted for a content moderation tactic similar to X, but don’t expect brands to boycott Facebook in the same way they did Elon Musk’s platform.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced changes to the company’s content moderation policies this week—specifically ending third-party fact-checking, and lifting restrictions on free speech across Facebook and Instagram.

The announcement was made by Joel Kaplan, Meta’s new Republican policy head, and is one of several recent conservative moves. Meta also donated $1 million to President-elect Donald Trump’s inauguration fund and added added Trump ally and UFC CEO Dana White to the company’s board of directors.

Advertisers aren’t likely to pull back because Meta’s ad products are unmatched in their scale and ability to drive performance. Brands also find themselves in a position where they are “less powerful,” than they were a few years ago during the #StopHateforProfit boycott against then-Facebook, said Courtney Werpy, Collective Measure’s associate director of performance media. In 2020, more than 500 brands including Coca-Cola, Ford, and Starbucks pulled their advertising in protest against Facebook’s handling of hate speech and misinformation.

“Brands feel less powerful. They have less of a say, and with the political polarization of all these social media channels, it’s hard for brands to know if they should speak up or if they shouldn’t,” Werpy added.

Brands that were once vociferous about stronger brand safety measures are now uncertain about how to navigate the evolving political terrain, said Shamsul Chowdhury, evp of paid social at Jellyfish.

“What was once considered unsafe is now viewed with more leniency and is less of a concern,” Chowdhury said. “This shift likely reflects changes in the political climate and brands’ increasing willingness to appear in environments they would have avoided in the past.”

Some advertisers are still thinking about fleeing, however. Roughly 10% of clients at growth marketing agency We Are Rival are considering pausing ad spend on Meta due to these changes. Jenna Cummings, We Are Rival’s co-founder and chief media officer, warned that pausing or pulling ad spend is not practical for most advertisers.

“The vast majority of Meta’s ad spend comes from small and medium-like enterprises,” said Cummings. “They were never boycotting en masse.”

The mask is off at Meta

The concept of brands appearing next to and funding content advertisers deem unsavory is drawing increasing scrutiny. Last year, the Department of Justice and Naval Criminal Investigative Service began investigating ad verification firms Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify.

For performance advertisers, the issue of brand safety is compounded by the limitations of Meta and Google’s own brand-safety tools that use AI like Advantage+ and Performance Max. These tools offer advertisers limited visibility and control over where their ads appear.

The conversation is shifting towards control and what is actually being sold to advertisers. With the rise of Advantage+ campaigns and Performance Max, traditional brand safety tools and verification providers no longer work in the walled gardens of paid social. This means advertisers have even less control over what they buy.

“Brand safety … has a nebulous economic value that there is very limited opportunity to control,” Cummings said.

How brands can play it smart

Brands can’t afford to ignore Meta. At Wpromote, 65% to 70% of the agency’s social media spend goes to Meta, making it central to most strategies.

“De-prioritizing or boycotting what is arguably their top-performing channel would be a massive decision for advertisers,” said Darren D’Alorio, Wpromote’s vp of paid social.

We Are Rival’s Cummings recommended diversifying social spend but keeping Meta in the mix.

“Get the value, but be realistic about the game that you’re playing,” she said. For instance, Meta’s auto-optimized inventory like Facebook’s right-hand rail ads often leads to poor results. Some campaigns see 10% to 15% of spend directed towards this spend, which is known for fraudulent placements, Cummings said.

Cummings said that Meta’s CPMs, or the cost advertisers pay to reach 1,000 people, for feed-based ads have risen to cost between $30 and $50 since 2023, making it an expensive buy. Instead brands could buy comparable quality inventory through CTV for the same price.

“Many brands have this default position of Google and Meta are all I need. Not necessarily…there’s more than one way to skin a cat” Cummings said.

Jack Bamberger, TikTok U.S.’ general manager of agency business, left the company on Jan. 3, according to a person with direct knowledge.

A second source from an advertising agency told ADWEEK that a TikTok rep confirmed Bamberger’s departure to them.

The move coincides with TikTok’s intensifying challenges, including a potential U.S. ban slated for January 19.

Bamberger did not respond to a request for comment. TikTok declined to comment about Bamberger’s employment.

It is not clear whether TikTok plans to fill Bamberger’s position.

Bamberger joined TikTok in March and resigned in December, according to the first source. He served as the primary liaison between the platform and its advertising partners and was responsible for fostering relationships with major agencies. Before TikTok, Bamberger was a strategic advisor at in-game advertising platform Anzu and previously led global partnerships at Verizon Media.

Bamberger’s exit follows the recent departure of Sameer Singh, TikTok’s head of ad sales for North America.

With the looming threat of a U.S. ban, the platform’s ad business, a critical revenue stream, faces potential disruptions, prompting advertisers to reevaluate their investment in TikTok.

The Supreme Court will hear arguments on the potential ban on January 10. Meanwhile, TikTok will be at CES this week, where executives will outline strategies for marketers to leverage its platform.

Sameer Singh, TikTok’s North America head of ad sales, is leaving the company, according to an internal memo reviewed by ADWEEK. The announcement comes as the popular video-sharing app faces mounting pressure, with a U.S. ban set to take effect on January 19.

Singh joined ByteDance in 2019 and has been a central figure in steering TikTok’s North American ad business. He will remain with the company until the end of February. Prior to his role at TikTok, Singh served as GroupM’s South Asia CEO.

“Sam will return to India at the end of January and remain available to support the NA team through the end of February,” wrote Blake Chandlee, TikTok’s president of global business solutions, in the memo that was shared with TikTok’s internal sales teams. “Notably, throughout 2024, Sam has led our teams in the U.S and Canada through an unprecedented political environment, dedicated to protecting our incredible users, creators and the business partners that use TikTok every day.”

Singh’s work at TikTok began with overseeing the company’s monetization efforts in India, where he helped manage the aftermath of the country’s ban of the app in 2020, according to the memo.  He also played a key role in expanding TikTok’s presence in markets like Brazil, Southeast Asia, and the Asia Pacific region.

Looking ahead, TikTok plans to “immediately begin the search for a new leader to oversee our NA business,” the memo noted.

Preparing for a potential ban

Singh’s departure comes at a pivotal moment for TikTok, with a U.S. ban looming amid escalating national security concerns. The U.S. government has threatened to ban TikTok unless ByteDance divests from the app, citing fears that the Chinese government could access user data.

The ban’s potential impact on advertisers and creators could be significant. Marketers’ strategies for performance advertising may be disrupted, and it could be harder for people to discover brands. Additionally, the competitive landscape for digital advertising could be reshaped.

The decision has also raised broader questions about the government’s control over tech platforms in terms of the balance between national security and free speech. The Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on January 10 regarding the potential ban. Meanwhile, TikTok is set to appear at CES next week, where executives will discuss the best ways for marketers to use its platform.

As the artificial intelligence gold rush continues, valuations have soared to dizzying heights. From generative AI models that can write codes to AI-driven search engines that promise smarter answers, U.S. AI startups are raking in billions from investors eager to bet on the next money-making technological revolution.

In Q3 2024, venture capitalists poured $3.9 billion into gen AI startups across 206 deals, $2.9 billion of which went to U.S.-based companies in 127 deals, according to PitchBook, (excluding OpenAI’s $6.6 billion funding round in October).  

Behind the eye-popping figures—some firms are now valued north of $10 billion—questions remain about whether these startups can sustain the hype, deliver on lofty promises, and justify their swelling price tags.

“Vanguard has hinted at a coming ‘correction,’ suggesting these valuations may be a touch too optimistic,” said Jeremy Goldman, sr. director of the marketing, retail, and tech briefings, Emarketer. “Investors are banking on constant innovation, but the road to AI dominance is paved with broken promises and beta tests.”

While AI firms are generating revenue, sky-high projections—like OpenAI’s $11.6 billion forecast for 2025—rest on the assumption of flawless execution and continuous innovation.

“Consumers have shown they’ll be willing to rely on imperfect products, but enterprises won’t necessarily pull the trigger on imperfect offerings,” said Goldman. Meanwhile, competition remains fierce, with OpenAI reportedly discouraging investors from backing rivals.

“In a world where tech dreams often collide with reality and regulators, expect a few hard landings [in 2025],” said Goldman. “The AI gold rush may yet prove fruitful, but some of these valuations are setting the stage for a very public reckoning.”

Here are some startups leading the charge—and the valuations that everyone is watching, (in price descending order).

OpenAI

Valuation: $157 billion (as of October 2024, per The New York Times)

Highlights: The world’s most highly valued AI startup is making strategic moves to secure its dominance. A $10 billion investment from Microsoft in 2023 fueled OpenAI’s rapid growth, anchored by its flagship model, ChatGPT, now integrated into Microsoft and Apple products. In 2024, OpenAI hired its first CMO and introduced ChatGPT as an AI-driven search tool, and started talking about an ad-based revenue model. ChatGPT surpassed 300 million weekly active users, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said at DealBook Summit earlier this month. Ongoing legal battles and substantial operational costs are its core challenges heading into 2025.

Total capital raised: $17.6 billion (per Crunchbase)

xAI

Valuation: $40 billion (as of October 2024, per Bloomberg)

Highlights: Elon Musk’s xAI—a 2023 startup that develops a platform to accelerate human scientific discovery—raised $6 billion last week. This capital came from 97 investors, with stakes as small as $77,593, according to a recent SEC filing. The funds will partially support the construction of a supercomputer facility in Memphis. xAI’s flagship product is Grok, a chatbot integrated with social network X (formerly Twitter). Musk’s entry into the AI space has drawn significant attention, positioning xAI as a competitor to established AI giants like OpenAI.

Total capital raised: $6.4 billion (per Crunchbase)

Anthropic

Valuation: $40 billion (as of September 2024, per The Information)

Highlights: Anthropic distinguishes itself from other AI companies by prioritizing ethical considerations in its development process. A formidable OpenAI rival with its Claude series of models, Anthropic has emphasized safety and reliability by incorporating a methodology called Constitutional AI. This aims to create an AI capable of evaluating and guiding the behavior of other AI systems with minimal human oversight—relying instead on a set of rules or principles. Anthropic recently made headlines with Amazon’s $4 billion investment, bringing Amazon’s total investment to $12 billion over the past 14 months, further solidifying Anthropic as a key player in the AI landscape.

Total capital raised: $8.4 billion (per Crunchbase)

Scale AI

Valuation: Nearly $14 billion (as of May 2024, per Bloomberg)

Highlight: Founded in 2016, years before OpenAI’s ChatGPT brought artificial intelligence to the mainstream, Scale emerged as an early leader in the AI sector. It’s backed by tech giants like Meta and Amazon, raising $1 billion in 2024, one of the year’s largest financing deals. The startup relies on a large workforce of contract workers to clean and label the vast amounts of text, images, and data necessary for developing AI chatbots and other products. Additionally, Scale leverages reinforcement learning from human feedback, using insights from real users to continuously improve its AI performance. Legacy automakers like General Motors and Toyota, along with chipmaker Nvidia, have utilized its platform.

Total capital raised: $1.6 billion (per Crunchbase)

Perplexity

Valuation: $9 billion (as of November 2024, per CNBC)

Highlight: Perplexity, a buzzworthy AI search startup backed by Jeff Bezos, started the year with a roughly $500 million valuation and is now close to raising $500 million in new funding. Known for challenging search giant Google and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Perplexity has also expanded into e-commerce. The app, which has over 2 million downloads and handles 230 million monthly queries (as of August), recently added publishers like the Los Angeles Times and The Independent to its revenue-sharing program. Perplexity pays publishers when ads generate revenue alongside their content. Brands like Whole Foods and Indeed are already testing ads on the platform. Meanwhile, The New York Times has demanded that Perplexity stop using content from its site in a cease and desist letter sent to the company.

Total capital raised: $99.2 million ( $73.6 million in Series B and $25.6 million in Series A, not including the current $500 million in new funding)

Inflection AI

Valuation: $4 billion (as of 2023, per TechCrunch)

Highlight: Inflection AI initially targeted the consumer AI space with its chatbot, Pi, designed as a supportive conversational assistant. However, after struggling to monetize the product, the company is now pivoting toward an enterprise focus, helping businesses work with large language models (LLMs). Meanwhile, tech giant Microsoft has agreed to pay Inflection $650 million for a software licensing deal. The company also recently appointed cofounder Mustafa Suleyman as head of its consumer AI division.

Total capital raised: $1.5 billion (per Crunchbase)

As marketers know only too well, there are trade-offs with everything. And in the era of set-it-and-forget-it tools, that trade-off is one of spend efficiency for ads sometimes showing up in questionable environments.

Despite grumbles, a lot of marketers have accepted that trade-off. But with AI fuelled made for advertising sites springing up, the phenomenon will likely exacerbate.

Looking specifically at Google’s Performance Max campaigns, which offer broad reach and valuable placements across multiple channels, three key challenges persist: the unchecked rise of low-quality AI-generated sites, the difficulty of opting out, and the labor-intensive process of sifting through vast ad placement data.

“MFA is a complex and challenging topic—it’s also a topic that lacks consensus and definition at the moment,” said a Google spokesperson. “We continue to review these issues and work with our industry partners on potential policy adjustments.” Google took action against over 2.1 billion publisher pages and 395,000 sites in 2023—an increase from 1.5 billion pages and 143,000 sites in 2022. It takes action on sites that violate its policies but were missed by its enforcement systems, the tech giant said.

Here’s your primer on these issues:

A surge in AI-spun sites

Previously, advertisers could avoid ads being served on MFA sites by using block lists.

Now, advertisers are faced with AI-spun template sites, often falling under the MFA category. These low-quality domains prioritize ad revenue over content and can emerge overnight with no human involvement, rapidly eating into ad budgets.

These sites can be spotted by their cookie-cutter appearance: repetitive designs, AI imagery, and suspicious domain names like privatecaregiverfortheelderlyfinder.today or gametacticzone.top, and extensions like .click or .today.

“We call them template sites,” said Rachmiel Moss, co-founder and CEO, DeepSee.io. “They’re carbon copies of each other, with slight variations.”

DeepSee.io has tracked a sharp rise in these sites, with their numbers jumping from 20,000 to nearly 50,000 since the start of the year, ADWEEK previously reported.

“They can be spun up very quickly,” said Moss, “There’s no human touch to them. I don’t know how Google monetizes this.”

Game sites, often featuring ad.txt files but little legitimate content, are also becoming more common.

“A single look reveals it’s just nonsense,” Moss added, noting that thousands of these sites are created weekly and continue to qualify for ad spend, “especially through Google’s Pmax campaigns.”

Traffic going to low-quality domains is never going to be zero, according to an agency executive, speaking anonymously to preserve industry relationships.

“With gen AI it’s just easier to spin up an MFA site,” the executive said.

No easy way to opt-out

Google’s ad ecosystem lacks a dedicated exclusion tool for MFA sites, meaning advertisers must manually block individual sites as they appear, according to the first agency exec.

“There isn’t necessarily a blanket setting to keep you out of that inventory,” the executive noted.

Although advertisers can block partial domains before a campaign launches, the constant emergence of new sites makes it difficult to maintain control, according to a second industry executive.

In 2021, Google rolled out dynamic exclusion lists, enabling advertisers to block placements based on topics like politics or devices such as tablets.

Navigating data overload  

While advertisers have long had access to ad tracking data through the Google API, they needed a certain amount of technical expertise to extract it, like writing custom scripts, said the first executive.

Since March, Google has made this data directly available in its ad ecosystem, simplifying access. However, extracting meaningful insights remains a challenge

“They contain thousands of rows in an Excel spreadsheet, so making it actionable and combing through the volume is more difficult,” the executive said.

Bluesky is booming as internet users seek out the comfort of a controlled social media environment. However, the opportunity for marketers remains limited, due to a lack of ad products and a relatively restrictive audience scale.

Brands who are actively posting organically on Bluesky are typical first movers, the likes of Duolingo, Hulu, and Netflix. Others like Red Bull and Xbox appear to have secured their handles; there is no business verification on Bluesky as yet so some users have secured brand handles to troll or impersonate brands, such as @cocacolagb, an expletive-filled account which claims to be the official brand feed, and @facebook, which is being used to “troll the libs.”

“For any brand considering launching on Bluesky, it’s important to think about [whether] the juice is worth the squeeze when the scale just isn’t quite there yet,” said Dana Neujahr, managing director of We Are Social. “I don’t think we’re bullish enough to say all of our clients should be publishing on Bluesky today.”

The social network’s audience growth has come mostly at the expense of X, Bluesky’s larger rival that has struggled to keep users under Elon Musk’s reign. Musk’s 2022 acquisition of the platform formerly known as Twitter—and his subsequent gutting of its staff and policies—prompted a handful of alternative networks to spring up.

These alternatives promised to act as a safer, more controlled environment than the mayhem that had been unleashed at X. But where Mastodon is too complicated for users and Meta’s Threads too corporate, Bluesky appears to be best primed to actually realize this mission.

The public benefit corporation’s model places transparency and autonomy at the core; Bluesky was born in 2019 from Twitter cofounder Jack Dorsey’s vision to build an “open and decentralized” social network. Rather than being controlled by a single company, Bluesky has been built on an open-source framework that enables users to control what they see in their feeds and select their own moderation filters.

It’s a strategy that appears to be working. Bluesky’s user base has more than doubled since October, per monitoring service Similarweb, with more than one million new users a day flocking to the service immediately after the U.S. presidential election. Musk’s close ties to the U.S. president-elect Donald Trump seemingly triggered an exodus that Bluesky has gained the most from, with more than 282,000 users deactivating their X accounts on November 6, according to Similarweb estimates.

Not yet a priority for brands

Despite the recent surge, Bluesky’s user base is still dwarfed by its rivals. As of Nov. 21, it had over 21 million users, a fraction of the 275 million monthly users that Meta’s Threads claimed in October and 600 million that Musk’s X claimed in May.

For most brands, it’s enough of an opportunity to reserve their handles on Bluesky, but that’s it.

Media buyers and social media managers think the platform could be a promising new playground for brands eventually, but it’s too early to tell.

“It’s a long way from having the kind of scale that matters to cause advertisers to care,” said Brian Wieser, principal at Madison and Wall.

Sustaining growth as a social network is hard: the past few years are littered with fleeting moments and few success stories, with giants like Meta hoovering up the majority of people’s time and marketer’s dollars.

“Commercially speaking, there hasn’t been a meaningful new platform since TikTok,” said Wieser.

Bluesky doesn’t currently have an advertising offering and CEO Jay Graber has expressed a reticence to change that, telling Wired in February that “we can’t enshittify the network with ads.”

Should it embrace ads, it would be unlikely to do so in a traditional way. Bluesky’s design necessitates the least annoying ads possible, otherwise users, in control of their algorithms, could simply filter them out.

“The brand potential is not going to look like what advertisers have come to expect from new social media platforms because Bluesky is not looking to make advertising a core revenue source,” said Elijah Harris, EVP of impact investment at IPG Mediabrands. “For advertisers, that means adapting video content for a new platform is likely not going to cut it.”

Courting creators

Marketing to Bluesky’s users through creators might be the most logical path ahead for brands.

The platform has already drawn in a crop of celebrities and journalists who have been encouraging their followers to decamp from the “toxicity” of X over the past few weeks.

To many, Bluesky represents a return to early Twitter, a platform where users could engage with like-minded people “without the noise, without the ads, and without the divisiveness,” that has become synonymous with X, said Neujahr.

Bluesky could also benefit from creators’ growing frustration with shadow bans on TikTok, where the platform reduces the visibility of some accounts without notification.

“There’s an opportunity for Bluesky to make sure that creators are respected and nurtured,” said Amy Luca, EVP, global head of social at S4 Capital’s Monks.

“Right now, the number one priority is getting more people to sign up for accounts, and the only way you can do that is if the content on the platform is what they want to consume, and there’s creators that they want to follow,” she added.

San Francisco-based data intelligence firm Truthset announced it raised $5 million in Series A funding last week, a sum it wants to put to improving the accuracy of consumer data powering the ad industry.

The firm claims an eye-popping 60% of consumer data is inaccurate, leading to waste and reduced profitability for marketers, according to the pitch deck exclusively shared with ADWEEK.

Its goal? To drive more accuracy in the $1 trillion-dollar consumer data industry.

Truthset works with data providers like Experian, Transunion, and Epsilon to analyze the accuracy of data. Its patented algorithms analyze consumer records and assign accuracy scores to data points across 1.27 billion hashed emails and 147 million households.

A brand might use Truthset to filter out inaccurate records in an audience file before targeting to drive more relevance. A publisher might use it to improve the fidelity of their audience data and increase match rates.

By removing these errors in data-driven marketing, Truthset claims it can unlock up to $100 billion in value.

Clients include Heineken, Paramount, and TelevisaUnivision.

With the new funding, it wants to grow partnerships with CPG and CTV brands and publishers. It’s also getting into the identifier game, with plans to launch solutions for third-party cookie deprecation.  

Check out the pitch deck below.