By coinnews 
00:00 Rachel Tipograph
If you look at Meta this week, or Alphabet, and even Snap, if you get under the hood, what we’ve consistently seen in Q1 is that brands invested in advertising, despite anything that was happening in the macro backdrop. And the reason why is because brands need to drive demand right now. And the number way that they’re going to do that is by investing in advertising. If you look at MikMak data, and we’re working with 2,500 of the biggest brands in the world, Meta on any given day is our number one source of traffic, followed by Alphabet, followed by TikTok. And so I wasn’t surprised when Meta reported pretty strong earnings because on any given day, it represents at least 50% of an advertiser’s budget. And for SMB businesses, that’s, it’s even larger. It can represent upwards of 90% of a total advertiser’s budgets. So, despite everything that’s happening in the macro backdrop, if you’re selling a product or service, you are heavily reliant on these platforms for demand generation.
02:22 Brian Sozzi
So, that’s Meta, Rachel. A powerhouse. Where does a company like Snap fit into that hierarchy? And clearly, you know, Snap reported, and there was real disappointment.
02:56 Rachel Tipograph
Yeah, well, it’s interesting. Like if you read Snap’s earnings, advertising did increase year over year. Where Snap, you know, communicated trepidation is what’s happening for the rest of the year, and the reality is a good portion of Snap advertisers are SMB businesses that are going to be heavily impacted by tariffs. And so, I think that’s what the market was really responding. That being said, Snap is a small portion of at least Fortune 1000’s overall brand investments. On any given day, Snap is probably within the bottom 10 of the most trafficked channels that we see for an advertiser. Before that would come Pinterest. Before that would be The Trade Desk. So, the reality is brands have many options to invest their dollars, and if it comes to a platform where they want to invest in short-form video, the number one place that they’re still investing is Instagram, with Reels being a big portion of that, followed by TikTok, followed by YouTube.
04:56 Brian Sozzi
I wanted to get your take, you know, we hit Meta and Snap. What are you seeing with TikTok specifically?
05:15 Rachel Tipograph
So, TikTok was another big moment in Q1. January 19th was a part of Q1, and that’s obviously when TikTok went dark in the U.S. It took until about March 1st for us to see TikTok traffic come back to where we were seeing before January 19th, but then by April 1, we were actually seeing TikTok traffic surpass Q4 levels. And if you talk to any brand advertiser, that’s a very powerful channel. It helps you build brands and drive conversion all at once, and brands will consistently tell you they will continue to invest in that channel until they are told they no longer can. And history goes to show that while President Trump sees the value of that asset, and has threatened to make certain decisions around it, that ban deadline continues to get pushed out. And I believe that’s what we’re going to see again happen in June.
06:59 Brian Sozzi
Interesting. If TikTok ever did go dark, Rachel, I’m just curious, where’s your guess of where those eyeballs and those ad dollars would flow to?
07:27 Rachel Tipograph
So if TikTok did go dark, I think what we saw all around January 19th is that Meta gains traffic, that Alphabet gains traffic, and Pinterest also gains traffic. And the reason why Pinterest is a dark horse that no one talks about is that Pinterest is really considered one of the safest places on the Internet. And with brands, of course, they’re thinking about, how do I drive demand to drive sales? But they’re also thinking about long-term brand equity and brand safety. And Pinterest is a place where you can invest your dollars, feel that it’s a brand-safe environment, and also drive conversion.