Media

Digiday cited a 20–40% increase in advertiser TikTok spending during the 2026 back-to-school season, drawing on agency-level figures from Tinuiti (20% year-over-year) and Go Fish Digital (41% year-over-year), though the sources use different client sets and baselines. Campaigns started roughly a week earlier than in 2025, and some budget shifts toward TikTok were attributed to saturation on Amazon and Walmart rather than to influencer activity. The report's aggregate range lacks disclosed methodology, and a widely cited Criteo statistic measures product sales movement, not TikTok media spend.

Nielsen expanded its Ad Intel product in Italy on September 9, 2026, to include connected-TV ad spend data across nine major streaming platforms including Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, giving advertisers a cross-platform view of competitor spending alongside linear TV and digital. The rollout follows earlier expansions in Germany and the UK, with France announced as the next market, though no launch date has been set. Nielsen has not disclosed whether the underlying spend figures are booked, observed, or modeled, leaving the technical basis of the data unconfirmed.