Sensor Tower: US advertising on TikTok grew by 11% in March despite the threat of a ban, with Pepsi, DoorDash, Amazon, and Apple among the top spenders
Digital advertising on the Chinese-owned video app grew by 11% in March — Advertisers are increasing their spending on TikTok …
Context & Ripple Effects
The roles have fully reversed since ByteDance's ~$1B promotional blitz on Facebook, Instagram, and Snap in 2018: the app that once bought its way into American feeds now pulls in mainstream US brand money even under an explicit ban threat, with Sensor Tower counting double-digit growth in March and Pepsi, DoorDash, Amazon, and Apple among the top buyers.
The spending lands mid-fight over the platform's future. TikTok's defense playbook — ad campaigns, funding creators' lawsuits, and a lobbying budget that doubled — depends on demonstrating commercial indispensability, and each month of brand spend strengthens that argument. The company had already pushed premium formats hard before this, asking well over $1M for top view placements.
First-order effects
- Pepsi, DoorDash, Amazon, and Apple are treating a possible ban as a priced risk rather than a dealbreaker, keeping TikTok's US ad revenue base intact through the regulatory standoff.
Second-order effects
- Continued brand spend gives TikTok more resources for its ban-defense effort — lobbying, legal funding, and creator campaigns — making advertisers indirect financiers of the fight over their own channel's survival.
Third-order effects
- If advertisers keep buying against ban risk, US media planning institutionalizes jurisdiction risk as a standard line-item, splitting the ad market into platforms judged on reach alone and those also discounted for geopolitical exposure.
The trend: US digital advertising is learning to price political risk on foreign-owned platforms, with brand demand outpacing regulatory pressure for now.