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After a turbulent weekend, TikTok is back – for the time being.

The wildly popular social media platform briefly went dim on Saturday night after the Supreme Court upheld a law that banned its presence in the U.S. unless parent company ByteDance sold the app to a domestic owner.

The highly-anticipated decision came after months of debate about whether the app posed a national security threat given its Chinese ownership and if banning TikTok violated free speech protections enshrined under the First Amendment.

However, despite the ruling, the app came back to life on Sunday after receiving assurances from President Donald Trump that he would issue an executive order to extend the deadline by 75 days so ByteDance can find a domestic partner.

Trump followed through on that promise Monday, so now the clock is ticking – not only for TikTok but also for its sizable user base and marketers seeking to position their clients in front of them.

Given the state of flux and uncertain regulatory future, medical marketing leaders said agencies need to proceed with caution around TikTok and establish contingency plans in case the app becomes unavailable once again. 

Looking elsewhere 

Beyond AbbVie and Amgen, not many drugmakers have an active presence on TikTok. 

If there was ever a time to embrace a diversified social media strategy for pharma clients, it would be now.

Still, for those considering opportunities on the app, it might be prudent to consider other apps with similar capabilities.

For Ashley Davis, VP of paid social at CMI Media and Compas, this may involve shifting clients’ focus to alternative platforms that offer similar video content opportunities, like Instagram Reels or YouTube Shorts.

Going forward, she said much of what agencies will choose to do from a social media strategy standpoint depends on the health brands they work with as well as the target audience demographic.

From her perspective, brands should be prepared to adapt their content strategies to different platforms if TikTok’s future becomes untenable, as the audience will likely still be seeking similar types of content.

“For example, if TikTok goes away or we see a shift in users, it’s a safe assumption that we might see an uptick in Reels,” Davis said. “We might see an uptick in YouTube Shorts or something similar – not even just the platform, but the tactic within that platform that mirrors that.”

Juliana DiBona, SVP and head of social and influence at Ogilvy Health, echoed this sentiment and noted that the longstanding guidance the agency has given clients is to never put all of your eggs in one basket when it comes to channel planning. 

While the TikTok ban has dominated headlines over the past week, it’s also not without precedent. Other social media platforms have experienced acute crises that put their existence in doubt and worried advertisers.

DiBona referenced the ‘Stop Hate for Profit’ boycott of Meta in 2020 as well as the user exodus of Twitter after Elon Musk bought the platform in late 2022. 

When pharma companies no longer feel they can be assured brand safety on a platform and achieve a return on their investments, they’ll take their activations elsewhere. 

“We’ve been used to having to include multiple channels in our plans in order to be able to pivot and shift budget around accordingly,” DiBona said. 

Unique algorithm

TikTok’s ultimate strength is its algorithm.

The proprietary tech has enraptured millions of users over the years and fostered communities of patients living with certain conditions or searching for reliable medical information. 

The temporary interruption in that content stream sent shockwaves among users and threatened years of momentum the app had built in healthcare spaces. 

Alia Mohsen, North America health lead of social and influencer strategy at Weber Shandwick, noted that while other social media platforms exist, none have been able to duplicate TikTok’s unique user experience.

“Both as a patient but also as a healthcare marketer, I very much gravitate towards TikTok – that is my North Star,” Mohsen said. “Again, that’s not to say that I don’t find community in other places, specifically Instagram and YouTube. Obviously, YouTube is a great search engine as well, but I think time will tell how that community rebuilds.”

Mohsen said many in the industry are waiting for the next shoe to drop and are maintaining a holding pattern until an announcement is made. 

Pharma brands rush in?

Health brands aren’t blind to the fact that TikTok has a considerable foothold in youth culture and supports tight-knit patient populations.

For all the hassle, TikTok is remarkably popular and can’t simply be ignored by medical marketing agencies and the clients they represent.

Gene Fitzpatrick, SVP and head of strategy for healthcare practice at MRM, underscored how important the platform has been to educating patients, reaching communities centered on certain disease states and allowing physicians to combat virulent medical misinformation. 

However, he noted that many of MRM’s clients – especially larger pharma companies – have been extremely skeptical of utilizing TikTok, mainly due to privacy concerns.  

“At larger company levels there seems to be the same concerns that legislators had regarding transparency of data,” he said. “I suspect the ban potentially validated and re-enforced those concerns.”

Still, as ByteDance will likely have to sell all or at least a portion of TikTik to a U.S.-based company in order to continue operating, Fitzpatrick said he could see this as a pathway for a rush of pharma brands to join the platform. 

Until that time – be it days, weeks or even months away – medical marketers reiterated that clear communication with clients will be important. 

Several leaders emphasized that the situation remains fluid and unpredictable, which requires a degree of patience on both the agency and client side.

CMI’s Davis said monitoring user behavior and performance metrics on TikTok will be crucial over the next 75 days to assess whether the platform remains viable for pharma advertising.

“I think it is wait-and-see at this point,” she said. “There’s an extension that was put in place, so it comes down to seeing what happens as we get closer to that date.”

To read a March 2025 article on TikTok lessons pharma brands can bring to Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, click here.