For 14 hours on January 19, 2025, TikTok disappeared from the U.S., plunging markets into a state of collective panic. The app, once synchronized with teenage dance crazes and meme culture, had become a cultural juggernaut — and for many brands, a hard to replace lifeline.
“It was a shell shock to the system,” said Jennifer Kohl, chief media officer at VML, the ad agency that had clients suddenly grappling with a possibility they’d only entertained in hypotheticals: life without TikTok.
Six years of political theatrics had turned the app into a lightning rod branded a national security threat and dragged repeatedly to the brink of extinction in the U.S. But in a twist that might as well as come from TikTok’s own algorithm, President Donald Trump stepped in, reviving the app’s chances with a 75-day lifeline to resolve its future.
For marketers, the outage and subsequent return wasn’t just a technological hiccup — it was a stark reminder of their uneasy pact with TikTok these days. On this platform, uncertainty isn’t an exception. It’s the price of admission — for now.
Just ask Margot Dukes Eddy, partner and head of social at Acadia. “I think the most sophisticated marketers and influencers have been spreading their content and their efforts long before this week,” she said.
That foresight traces back to TikTok’s first existential meltdown in 2020, when its U.S. fate was first thrown into question. So, when the drama flared again — they were ready to pivot, dollars in hand.
Andrew Fingerman, CEO of PhotoShelter pointed out that the ban/blackout was a shock to the system, but definitely not the end of the road for brands and marketers using the platform.
“It gave them a chance to rethink how they reach their audience and future-proof their strategies,” he said.
So far, the results have been a mixed bab. Some marketers have resumed spending at pre-drama levels, while others remain cautious, especially those burned by TikTok’s abrupt off-and-on saga. Ultimately, it all comes down to how much risk marketers are willing to take — and how long they believe TikTok can keep dancing on the edge.
Some of Shamsul Chowdhury clients at JellyFish are back to operating business as usual on TikTok, while others are still holding off due to the uncertainty of the current situation, said the evp of paid social.
It’s a similar situation for Jack Johnston, senior social innovation director at Tinuiti. He said his team saw about 70% of their brands return to TikTok within the first 48 hours after the shutdown, and that number is slowly climbing.
“Brands are still looking at using their contingency plans to diversify, but they are not fully divesting away from TikTok,” he added, without providing exact figures.
Unsurprisingly, TikTok has been quick to steady the ship, working with marketers to navigate the latest turbulence. Whether these efforts will be enough to keep advertisers on board — and spending — remains to be seen. But until then, TikTok is once again proving that survival in the social media arena is as much about managing perceptions as it is about algorithms.
Johnston described TikTok as being incredibly communicative leading up to the shutdown late on Jan. 18, but it has slowed down since the app went back online. For TikTok, it is almost back to business as usual, at least temporarily, because there has been no major curveballs since President Trump signed his executive order on Jan. 20.
For now, it’s simply a waiting game.
One U.S. ad exec spoke of the automated message they received from TikTok on Jan. 19, after the app came back online.
“We’re excited to let you know that as of today, TikTok will become available for the majority of U.S. users,” TikTok’s message said. “Over the course of Sunday, ad campaigns that include U.S. audiences will resume operating and delivering ads to U.S.-based users, although live campaigns will have certain limitations.
“Although we’ve reinforced our infrastructure to minimize disruptions, we anticipate some temporary service instability that may affect advertising in the U.S.”
That U.S. executive said anecdotally that about 20 clients who are on TikTok in the U.S. were all back online again and without ongoing issues within the first 24 hours of the app coming back online.
JellyFish’s Chowdhury agreed and said the TikTok team has been communicative in recent days and was working with his leaders to restore campaigns that were shut off due to the ban.
“On Jan. 20, our reps let us know [TikTok was back] and started working with us on how to get campaigns back live,” he added. “We’ve been in daily contact daily since Monday [Jan. 27] .”
That’s the reality for many marketers now: a mix of cautious optimism, constant pivoting and campaigns built on the hope that the platform will stick around long enough to make an impact.
“It [TikTok] is a wounded platform 1737966928”, said Matt Owens, chief design and innovation officer and founding partner at Athletics.
Owens, like so many marketers, is under any illusions about a precarious future any more. If anything, the uncertainty has sharpened their awareness, forcing marketers to navigate a short-term landscape where every decision feels like a gamble (albeit a calculated one).
“Plans are in wait-and-see” mode,” said Kohl. “The truth is you can take almost any platform out of a plan and start figuring out a surrogate for it.”
This article was originally published by a digiday.com . Read the Original article here. .