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TikTok’s dramatic 14-hour shutdown in the U.S. has left some advertisers grappling with a noticeable dip in user engagement, impacting campaign performance.
In a memo sent to advertisers this week and reviewed by ADWEEK, TikTok stated that the app is available to “the majority of U.S. users” but warned of “temporary instability” that could affect the app’s features and user access.
“We’ve seen a decrease in all of our metrics and communicated to our clients that their profile health has come down,” said Harriet Riley, social strategy director, Pereira O’Dell, though she wouldn’t share specifics. “There’s a lull in activity because there is a whole user base that has not returned immediately,” she added.
Pereira O’Dell tracks metrics such as likes on TikTok videos to establish daily engagement baselines, primarily influenced by the platform’s discovery and search features.
TikTok’s disruption, though brief, created chaos for both advertisers and users. At press time, TikTok remains unavailable for download from the Apple and Google app stores.
“There is going to be a delta in data specifically to the performance of live and active paid campaigns,” said Riley. She noted that when platforms go down, ad delivery pauses, resulting in reduced reach and engagement for campaigns in progress.
According to the memo, because the campaign was paused for fewer than seven days, TikTok will not re-enter the platform’s “learning phase” when resumed. Typically, platforms such as TikTok and Meta notify advertisers that campaigns will enter a learning phase when launched or after significant changes, during which the platform recalibrates and optimizes ad delivery.
At performance agency Tinuiti, 70% of clients who paused ads last week—either by choice or due to the app outage—have resumed campaigns this week. CPMs have dropped 29% compared to the previous week, according to the agency.
“This indicates that there could potentially be overall performance woes in either how the algorithm is finding users or those users’ likeliness to convert,” said Jack Johnston, senior social innovation director, Tinuiti.
Additional figures from ecommerce and analytics platform MikMak, which works with 2,000 brands and has a view into $3 billion of digital U.S. ad spend, shows paid media on TikTok plummeted to zero during the platform’s brief shutdown. While ad spend is gradually returning to the app, some brands are shifting their advertising dollars to Google and Pinterest.