The Deal That Isn’t Done (yet)

TikTok’s New Deal - a partial sale, a fractured future, and a lot of unanswered questions.

Jim Louderback
September 29, 2025

This Week: A new TikTok deal offers short-term stability for creators and brands, but unresolved issues could still split the app in two. All eyes on China as it has to yet ratify the "agreement".

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💡 TOP STORIES

The new TikTok deal announced Thursday by President Trump raised more questions than it answered. ByteDance would retain about 20% ownership and one of seven board seats, while U.S. investors take roughly half… yet ByteDance is apparently still entitled to 50% of profits. That’s good short-term news for creators and advertisers, since the app and ads remain unchanged. But the valuation looks oddly low ($14B for a division that generated $16B in 2023) and reports of a 15% stake by Abu Dhabi’s MGX add complexity.

US Lawmakers are already flagging unresolved issues: foreign ownership potentially edging past the 20% limit, unclear authority over algorithm updates, limited source-code access, partisan content control and ByteDance’s ongoing ownership of US operations and potential veto power. Beijing’s silence hasn’t helped. And If U.S. oversight ignores ByteDance algorithm updates, the app could fork… diluting the experience for creators, advertisers, and users everywhere. Finally, when tech moguls take over social platforms it rarely ends well. Exhibit A: Murdoch + Myspace.

I’m glad there’s some progress here. But with all the open questions, it’s hardly closure. TikTok remains both a global bargaining chip and domestic football… more endless loop than fantastic finish. (WaPo ($), LinkedIn, CNBC, Reuters)

TIKTOK BECOMES AMERICA’S NEWSSTAND

Remember when TikTok was just Musical.ly lip-syncs and goofy dance remixes? According to a new Pew study, in 2020 only 3% of Americans said they regularly got news there. Today it’s 20% overall… and a staggering 43% of Gen Z/Alpha. YouTube and Instagram also grew by about a third and along with Facebook, still edge out TikTok in total news-seeking U.S. adults, but the gap has narrowed fast. With TikTok now the fourth-largest social video news source in America, who controls it and under what terms matters more than ever. (Pew)

Related: Pew also looked at podcasts, news and trust with similarly fascinating findings. (Pew)

Related: Platforms of choice split hard, with TV for the oldsters and digital for young’uns. (Pew)

FROM “PUBLISH OR PERISH” to “ADAPT OR DIE”

Good policy-wonk piece shows how science and other fact-based organizations must toss out the top-down comms approach. Fire quote: “Public attention has shifted decisively. Institutions working on issues that depend on mass public support must adapt to today’s media environment—or risk irrelevance. “ In other words, embrace creator-first media and de-emphasize yesterday’s trusted gatekeepers. I’m working with a couple of non-profits to help them optimize for this shift – but there’s a lot more perspective shifting yet to be done. Read to the end for a five-step process to embrace the shift, from building “capacity” in advance to leadership AMAs, collaborative storytelling and data-driven evaluation. (Carnegie Endowment for International Peace) – H/T @kiki Sanford)

Related: Wired turned its journalists into creators. It was a huge success. (AdWeek)

THE VITAMIX OF DOOM

I was chatting with a friend at an influencer agency last week about the AI-driven shifts upending marketing, and he pointed to the Rembrand + Spaceback merger as the perfect example. It blends virtual product placement with social-native ads, spins out thousands of variants, and then programmatically drops them across social and video platforms at scale. AI runs creation, buying, placement, and optimization.

Layer in YouTube’s new “Dynamic Brand Segments,” which let creators swap out sponsorships in existing videos, and Amazon’s new “Agentic AI Tool”, and you start to see the future: products endlessly inserted into entire back catalogs, then spewed out instantly as both in-video insertions and stand-alone ads. The upside? More yield, more flexibility, and more revenue.

The downside? Botched endorsements, bad adjacencies or uncanny integrations that torpedo trust. Creators should update their brand deal agreements now. Demand approval rights on virtual insertions, veto power on context and creative, ironclad exclusivity and a rev-share covering first placement and any future swaps. (Ad Exchanger, Amazon)

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💡 PLATFORMS

YOUTUBE

Ban the Block: Some are reporting a YouTube view decline – and blame ad blockers. (Android Police)

Testing, 1-2-3: Get early access to AI experiments via a new “YouTube Labs”. First up: AI hosts on YouTube Music. (YouTube)

Carry On My Wayward Son: NBC and Disney are next in the ongoing YouTubeTV carriage spats. (TechTimes, GetYourChannels)

Slop Is Good: Twitter obsessed @Ben Thompson discovers YouTube and concludes AI is coming for creators. Money quote: AI “increases the amount of compelling content in absolute terms, and it does so with better margins (than creators), at least in the long run.” (Stratechery)

YouTube Is Ready When You Are: Big Red brings creators to Delta’s in-flight entertainment system. Reminds me of when we brought Diggnation and Tekzilla to Virgin America. (THR, TC)

Forget TikTok: Could 2028 be the YouTube election in the US? (Politico)

TIKTOK

Trick or Treat: While TikTok’s fate hung in the balance, they launched “31 Days of TikTok-Tober”. (TikTok)

Global Change: TikTok’s 2025 Global Changemakers list highlights creators worldwide. Great to see @TexasBeeKeeper and @SophiaSmithGaler on the list! See Sophia at 1BFS in January in Dubai! (TikTok)

💡 QUIBIS

OTHER CREATOR ECONOMY

Sell Your Videos: Excited to see this come out of stealth. Buy.Video lets anyone upload a video and sell a video directly to fans. From the team at Switcher, it’s another option for a creator’s revenue mix (Buy.Video)

Shut the Door and Dim the Lights: The last of my five bosses at Viacom/Paramount just left. Curious to see what @Pam Kaufman does next. (LinkedIn)

Give Creators Equity: Looking forward to @Jeff Frommer’s OWM launch this week. (Owners Only)

Get Spiffy: Give your Linktree a glow-up with new AI tools and more! (Net Influencer)

Branding Meets Performance: @Mike Shields explores how Unilever will spend half its ad budget on creators and social. (Next in Media)

Night Adds Consultancy: Night Media now helps companies with social/media strategy, along with providing you creators. (SBJ)

OG Boomerang: RocketJump is back! (YouTube) – H/T Publish Press

Saved By TradExecs: The Hollywood to YouTube pipeline keeps flowing. @Sean Atkins (Dhar Mann), @Scott Lewers (CrunchLabs) and now @Corie Henson decamps from NBC to MrBeast. Smart to add a reality TV expert to the mix! (TheWrap)

Ghosting India: Snap doubles viewership in India and adds an impressive group of new creators. (The Indian Express)

The Perils of Subscription Businesses: Adding a subscription product? The FTC offers a cautionary tale from its recent settlement with Chegg. Don’t be Chegg. (FTC)

I Love Liquid Death: Their Cluely parody was just what I needed. Drink a few “Liquid Death Textbooks” and call me in the morning. Snort (YouTube)

CREATOR TECH – AI, AR, VR, MORE

This Could Be Big: Congrats to ex-TikTok exec @Adrienne Lahens for launching “Infinite Studios, focused on using AI to supercharge creators and brands. (LinkedIn)

Crank Up the Gigawatts: In his personal blog, OpenAI CEO Altman predicts abundant intelligence. (Sam Altman)

Big Money: The 1 Billion Followers Summit just announced how to win a million dollars with your AI movie. The catch? You must make it with Google-powered tools. (Tubefilter)

Accelerate Your Startup in Dubai: CreatorsHQ and 1BFS launched Creator Ventures, an accelerator for creator-led startups. Apply now, the program starts in two weeks and ends at the event, where you get to pitch and hopefully raise! (CreatorsHQ)

📍 Where’s Jim? Another week in the bay and then off to Dubai for some event planning and my first Gitex! We’ve got a HUGE announcement next week so don’t miss that! Plus if you’re coming to Web Summit, I’m cooking up an awesome creator economy meetup Tuesday night in Lisbon!

100% written by me – no human or AI ghostwriters were involved in the production (except for the cover art!) and AI was very lightly used for editing.

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