Tariffs, Trump, TikTok: What’s going to happen to ads in 2025?

Channels with Peter Kafka

Vox Media Podcast Network

Business News, News, Tv & Film, Technology

4.4 • 585 Ratings

🗓️ 30 April 2025

⏱️ 56 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

There are all kinds of ways to measure the health of an economy. The one I rely on is ad spending. One reason for that is simple: I work in ad-supported businesses, so I want to know about things are going to affect me personally. A less self-interested reason: The health of the ad business is tied directly to the way companies feel about their overall health. So if things turn south, you’ll often see it in falling ad spend. And as the industry gets increasingly digital, that means it’s that much more responsive to changes in the economy: When the pandemic hit 5 years ago, ad spend all but disappeared for a couple months — and then roared back once companies realized how much spending had shifted online. So that’s the background for my chat with Smartly CEO Laura Desmond, who I often rely on for a state-of-the-state when it comes to the ad industry. Desmond is a longtime ad biz veteran, and at her current gig she works directly with digital clients, helping them figure out where to place their money and the best way to optimize their campaigns. So she’s got excellent insight into the most sensitive spenders in the market. Desmond’s takeaway: Long-term changes like a possible TikTok ban just don’t show up on most advertisers’ radars. But potential tariff impacts, which could hit by late May, could be a big hit — if they materialize. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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1:33.1	tis and see supply from the box media podcast network this is channels, Peter Kafka, that is me.
1:45.4	I'm also the chief correspondent at Business Insider.
1:49.1	And today we're checking in on the ad business, because it seems like the ad business
1:53.1	should be in for a world of change.
1:55.6	TikTok could go away.
1:57.9	Google and meta might be broken up.
2:03.8	And there's a worldwide terraiff war about to start that could make the economy not great again. So that's why I wanted to talk to Laura Desmond.
2:09.6	I wanted to get a sense of how the ad business is actually thinking about some or all of these
2:14.0	threats. Desmond is someone I often chat with when I want to get a snapshot of ad work.
	...

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