TikTok’s Huge US Growth Projections; Amazon’s Media Businesses Valued At $500B

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TikTok Goes Boom

TikTok made between $200 million and $300 million in advertising worldwide last year, and this year it’s aiming to generate $500 million in the United States alone, The Information reports. Optimistic forecasts and sales goals are far from reliable predictors of growth. Still, those numbers indicate absolutely monster growth for the still-nascent social platform (at least in Europe and North America, since parent company ByteDance already has a major presence in Asia). TikTok is also following the Silicon Valley set in its monetization plan, with a self-serve ad platform it launched last year, a new site-tracking pixel and integrations with ad tech vendors.

Prime Value

Amazon’s media businesses, including Prime Video, Prime Music and Twitch, are worth about $500 billion, according to Needham senior analyst Laura Martin. It’s hard to put a tag on Amazon’s media assets. For one thing, they’re inextricable from the retail marketplace, since the entertainment library is the most compelling feature of the Prime loyalty program, CNBC reports. Advertising and media subscription services also have higher profit margins than ecommerce, so investors value that revenue growth. “Media assets typically trade at higher multiples than retailer multiples, so they pull Amazon’s average valuation multiple upwards,” Martin writes in her analysis of the company. Almost a third of Martin’s valuation of Amazon’s media empire is made up of these “hidden value” generators that contribute to the overall business but can’t be easily quantified.

Hit ’em Where It Hurts

Some of the country’s leading civil-rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and the NAACP, are now advocating that brands suspend their Facebook advertising campaigns, because of the company’s failure to restrain hostility and misinformation on the platform. The NAACP has had multiple conversations with Facebook executives about creating safeguards for news and electoral interference, said President and CEO Derrick Johnson. “Now we’re approaching four years later, another election cycle. All evidence suggests that the same thing will happen this year and that should not be acceptable by anyone,” Johnson tells The Wall Street Journal. The group’s ad campaign asks “all businesses to stand in solidarity with our most deeply held American values of freedom, equality and justice and not advertise on Facebook’s services in July.”

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