Khartoon Weiss, VP of global business solutions, kicked off TikTok’s 2025 NewFront presentation with a simple plea promise.
“TikTok is here,” she said. “We’re here.”
Without explicitly naming the existential elephant in the room, TikTok executives made the case to advertisers Tuesday afternoon that the platform isn’t going anywhere. During her speech, Weiss said the company is “confident in the future of this platform,” perhaps due in part to comments made by President Donald Trump earlier this week where he said he has a “warm spot in [his] heart” for TikTok and would grant the platform an additional ban extension if it does not find a US-based buyer by June 19, when the current extension ends.
It was the second year in a row where TikTok was faced with reassuring advertisers amid a drawn-out legal battle over the future of the platform. This time around, speakers onstage repeatedly made the case for TikTok as the brand-safe platform du jour for creating and engaging with cultural moments.
“Go to Settings, check your screen time. You know the monster you have become,” emcee and comedian Hasan Minhaj said during the presentation. “[TikTok] is where culture starts and where it evolves and where it spreads.”
What’s new? At Tuesday’s event, the platform announced new ad products and updates designed to place advertiser content next to trending and cultural content, including Sponsorship Solutions, which puts advertiser content in search results.
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TikTok also announced that it’s continuing to build on its Pulse Suite offerings with Pulse Core, which guarantees placement next to top trending UGC based on categories like holidays, sports, or beauty. Also in the Suite is Pulse Premiere, which places ads next to professionally generated content from publishers like Disney, Hearst, the NFL, and Paramount. Formula 1, Red Bull Media, and Warner Bros. Discovery were announced as new Pulse Premiere partners at the event.
Meanwhile, across the pond: While TikTok’s execs pitched advertisers in New York on “industry-leading” data protection, the platform announced it was opening a data center in Finland as part of its “Project Clover” EU data privacy initiative that seeks to protect sensitive European user data. The announcement came just days after the EU hit the platform with a $600 million fine around the platform’s data-protection practices.
One for the road: Weiss closed out TikTok’s NewFront event with additional reassurances to attendees. “Our advertising business, ladies and gentlemen, will not change,” she said. “We remain open for business and we stay streaming.”
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