A TikTok employee responsible for user acquisition called on people with ad inventory to get in touch on LinkedIn on Sunday, 18 October. Since 8 October, Meta has blocked ads from TikTok, as well as other companies' ads that lead to TikTok, from Facebook and Instagram in seven countries, but the European Union is not among them. The ban applies in the US, Canada, Egypt, Indonesia, Japan, Thailand and Vietnam. Since the ban, TikTok has been shifting budgets to mobile-app ad networks, YouTube and Pinterest, the analytics firm Sensor Tower estimates.

The ban may also hit a brand that uses Facebook or Instagram to send people to a creator, a product page or an account on TikTok, writes the social media magazine WeRSM. Another brand's ad linking to a creator's TikTok profile could, for example, end up on Instagram in Japan the same way as an ad from TikTok itself. Teams buying ads in the affected countries now have to check destination URLs as carefully as the creative, according to DesignRush. How narrowly Meta interprets the rule remains an open question.

The rule does not apply in Czechia, and ByteDance may keep advertising on Facebook and Instagram across the entire EU. Meta's statement mentions neither the EU nor the reason for its choice of countries. In September 2023, the European Commission designated Meta a gatekeeper under the Digital Markets Act (DMA), as it did ByteDance. For Meta, the designation also covers Facebook, Instagram and the Meta Ads advertising service. The DMA is most likely the reason for the gap in Europe, the German website Dr. Web concludes. In its view, excluding an advertising client purely because it is a competitor sits poorly with the non-discriminatory access obligation the regulation imposes.

“Declining promotional services to a competitor is a normal business practice across industries,” a Meta spokesperson said in an emailed statement, defending the refusal of a competitor. TikTok's goal, according to the spokesperson, is to pull people off Meta's apps. TikTok and ByteDance were notably large advertisers on Meta's apps, according to Sensor Tower.

TikTok's spending went to YouTube and ad networks

After the ban, the money of such a large advertiser went elsewhere. In the week from 9 to 16 October 2026, YouTube took 17% of TikTok's ad spend, up from 9% in the first week of October, Sensor Tower estimated for Business Insider.

Mobile-app ad networks such as Google's AdMob received 58% of TikTok's spend in the same week. At the start of October 2026, when Meta was still an option, the figure was 19%.

According to Reuters, TikTok does not support links that open or log users into other social media apps. Users can still add a link to such an app's website to their profile. The Meta spokesperson also pointed to long-standing restrictions ByteDance uses to block outbound links to Facebook and Instagram. In September, TikTok rejected ads from Meta. They called on TikTok to make child-safety commitments similar to those Meta accepted in its August settlement with US states.

For companies from German-speaking countries that run Meta ads in the affected countries, Dr. Web advises placing their own website between the ad and the TikTok profile or TikTok Shop. For video ads on Facebook and Instagram in Germany, nothing has changed so far. “It seems Meta’s ‘normal business practice’ only applies where regulators won’t call it something else,” Paul Drecksler, founder of the e-commerce newsletter Shopifreaks, wrote of the European exemption.

By Tereza Tiller