Tag: Advertising and Marketing

The Clock Ticks for TikTok

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Another round in the TikTok fight The warnings against TikTok aren’t letting up, with U.S. security officials saying China is using the platform to meddle in elections and lawmakers calling the video app a global threat. The sharp rhetoric isn’t new, but it raises a question for policymakers and business: Is the new push to force ByteDance, the company’s Chinese owners, to divest a real step change or just political posturing? The House is barreling toward a vote on Wednesday that would force ByteDance to sell. Representative Steve Scalise, Republican…

Big American Tech Profits From Chinese Ad Spending Spree

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The trade relationship between China and the United States has plenty of friction. But at least one area is booming: Chinese start-ups looking to establish a presence in the West are spending billions of dollars for advertisements on services owned by some of Silicon Valley’s biggest technology companies. Temu, the international arm of the Chinese e-commerce giant Pinduoduo, is flooding Google with ads for absurdly inexpensive goods. With an initial public offering looming, the fast-fashion merchant Shein is inundating Instagram with ads for clothes and accessories at rock-bottom prices. Developers…

The Sunday Read: ‘The Ongoing Mystery of Covid’s Origin’

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By David Quammen Produced by Adrienne Hurst and Aaron Esposito Edited by John Woo Original music by Aaron Esposito Engineered by Corey Schreppel and Brian St. Pierre Listen to and follow “The Daily”Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher Where did it come from? More than three years into the pandemic with untold millions of people dead, that question about the origin of Covid-19 remains widely disputed and fraught, with facts sparkling amid a tangle of analyses and hypotheticals like Christmas lights strung on a dark, thorny tree. One school of…

The Sunday Read: ‘The Silicon Blockade’

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Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher Last October, the United States Bureau of Industry and Security issued a document that, underneath its 139 pages of dense bureaucratic jargon and minute technical detail, amounted to a declaration of economic war on China. The magnitude of the act was made all the more remarkable by the relative obscurity of its source. In recent years, semiconductor chips have become central to the bureau’s work. Despite the immense intricacy of their design, semiconductors are, in a sense, quite simple: tiny…

For Olympic Sponsors, ‘China Is an Exception’

Chin@Strategy

At the bottom of the slope where snowboarders will compete in the 2022 Beijing Olympics, an electronic sign cycles through ads for companies like Samsung and Audi. Coca-Cola’s cans are adorned with Olympic rings. Procter & Gamble has opened a beauty salon in the Olympic Village. Visa is the event’s official credit card. President Biden and a handful of other Western leaders may have declared a “diplomatic boycott” of the Winter Games, which begin next week, but some of the world’s most famous brands will still be there. The prominence…

China’s Celebrity Culture Is Raucous. The Authorities Want to Change That.

Chin@Strategy

China’s online censors have for years relentlessly silenced political dissidents, #MeToo activists, liberal intellectuals, satirists and anybody else who has threatened to disturb the digital peace. Now, its internet minders have turned their attention to “stan” culture. The Chinese government has taken a series of steps in recent days to rein in celebrity worship and fan clubs, amid growing concerns among officials that the relentless quest for online attention is poisoning the minds of the country’s youth. On Friday, the Cyberspace Administration of China banned the ranking of celebrities by…