Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news. Let's talk about how
Speaker 1: this is impacting TikTok uses and the brands that use it.
Speaker 1: Rachel Tipograf is founder and CEO. Make Mack is an
Speaker 1: e commance marketing platform for multi channel brams. What did
Speaker 1: they make of the sudden going black? Did brands pull
Speaker 1: away from spending on TikTok? It's been wild.
Speaker 2: January eighteenth, ten pm, New York Time, we saw TikTok
Speaker 2: brand traffic go to zero percent. It stayed that way
Speaker 2: for fifteen hours. Traffic started to come back January nineteenth,
Speaker 2: twelve fifteen pm, and for about two business days it
Speaker 2: held at zero point five percent of our traffic. Wow,
Speaker 2: in the last two business days it has risen. It
Speaker 2: now represents around fifteen percent of our total traffic. I've
Speaker 2: been coming on the show now for two years. You've
Speaker 2: heard me say TikTok typically is thirty five percent of
Speaker 2: our traffic. Based on this meteoric rise in the last
Speaker 2: two business days, we at MCMAC leave that we're going
Speaker 2: to get back to normal rates on Monday.
Speaker 3: Rachel, what is the fallout for businesses that are tied
Speaker 3: in some way or another? Two TikTok from all the
Speaker 3: uncertainty surrounding whether we'll continue, whether there will be a purchaser.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I think the delta between fifteen and thirty
Speaker 2: five percent is essentially all those Fortune one thousand brands
Speaker 2: that are feeling very skittish right now with the uncertainty
Speaker 2: and who's going to be the new parent owner, as
Speaker 2: well as just the overall view right now of the
Speaker 2: Supreme Court. They don't want to be held liable and
Speaker 2: typically they're spending hundreds of millions of dollars on that platform.
Speaker 2: So there is a large set right now of the
Speaker 2: Fortune one thousand brands that are just waiting to see
Speaker 2: what the outcome is going to be, make sure they
Speaker 2: have to make decisions and whey to allocate Right now,
Speaker 2: we're just seeing some of your data.
Speaker 1: Who's winning.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So these brands, they're heavily reliant obviously on their
Speaker 2: marketing budgets. It's how they drive demand generation and sales.
Speaker 2: So in the last say two weeks, we have watched
Speaker 2: spend move out of TikTok as well as meta. We
Speaker 2: can circle back on that into alphabet, which is paid search, YouTube,
Speaker 2: DV three sixty and pinterest The reason why is that
Speaker 2: brands are looking for reach, conversion, and brand safety. Alphabet
Speaker 2: absolutely delivers on reach and conversion. They've made enormous efforts
Speaker 2: around brand safety since all of the challenges YouTube had
Speaker 2: in twenty twelve. And then Pinterest. I've been on the show,
Speaker 2: I talked about it. It's a dark horse that no
Speaker 2: one talks about. It's the safest place on the Internet,
Speaker 2: and brands are moving dollars there because Pinterest can drive
Speaker 2: conversion as well. So the big winners are Alphabet and Pinterest.
Speaker 2: The reason why we've also seen a decline in meta
Speaker 2: traffic in the month of January has everything to do
Speaker 2: with the announcement Zuckerberg made two and a half weeks
Speaker 2: ago when he announced that fact checking was going to
Speaker 2: be removed from the platform. Brands once again fell skittish.
Speaker 2: Brands care about their law term, brand equity, their brand safety,
Speaker 2: and whenever a platform becomes political, they reallocate dollars to
Speaker 2: platforms that they have more confidence in their brand safety.
Speaker 3: Rachel, we were just talking to a prospective bidder for TikTok.
Speaker 3: What does all this churn mean for its value and
Speaker 3: perhaps ultimate purchase price.
Speaker 2: I'm personally skeptical of what's going to happen with this
Speaker 2: divestiture if it goes into the hands of a new
Speaker 2: US parent owner. TikTok is not TikTok without the algorithm.
Speaker 2: The community is based on the app automatically pushing you
Speaker 2: like minded people. That's what makes TikTok so magical. With
Speaker 2: a new US parent owner, if they can't replicate the
Speaker 2: magic of that algorithm, I know with significant confidence people
Speaker 2: are going to move out of TikTok. We saw it
Speaker 2: in the last two weeks. It's so easy to build
Speaker 2: a new community in a new app. Will be red note,
Speaker 2: will it be blue sky, will it be pinterest on time,
Speaker 2: will tell? And so I have trepidation on what's going
Speaker 2: to happen. From a brand advertiser standpoint. They're going to
Speaker 2: go wherever eyeballs and engagement are. So brands can move
Speaker 2: their dollars very easily. I think we've all seen that
Speaker 2: in the month of January. It's like trading on Wall
Speaker 2: Street media buying. You can move a dollar from one
Speaker 2: platform to the next in a second.
Speaker 3: Rachel Tipograph, founder and CEO of Mick Mac, we thank
Speaker 3: you