The proposed purchase, in partnership with Microsoft Corp, would allow the world’s largest retailer to quickly compete with Amazon.com Inc, Facebook Inc and Alphabet Inc’s Google for eyeballs on social media, reaching customers across virtual and physical sales channels.

TikTok is up for sale as the Chinese-owned company is under fire from the Trump administration as a potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data the app is compiling on U.S. consumers.

Walmart, which pitched its ad business to large consumer goods companies and advertising firms for the first time last year, said on Thursday it was “confident” it could meet U.S. TikTok users’ expectations and satisfy U.S. regulators’ concerns.

TikTok owner ByteDance aims to ink a deal by Sept. 15, people familiar with the matter told Reuters.

“Walmart is going to see a very quick rise in ad spend” if its bid succeeds, said Scott Smigler, president of e-commerce marketing agency Exclusive Concepts.

“From a brand standpoint, it’s a no brainer because of the reach Walmart has and the huge shift we’re seeing right now from offline to online (spending). ... For all of our brands and retailers that are eligible, we’re going to want them on Walmart for sure.”

Last week, Walmart posted its biggest-ever quarterly growth in online sales, as the unprecedented spike in demand seen by big-box retailers at the peak of the coronavirus lockdowns has remained strong even as restrictions ease.

Walmart does not break out revenue from sponsored ads for products sold on its website. But online ads yield much higher margins than product sales, and ad revenue is growing as the retailer boosts investments in the area.

It has been more important than ever for Walmart to find new ways to win market share from its closest e-commerce rival Amazon.com, a fast-growing ad platform, as customers increasingly shop online.

Amazon reported $4.2 billion in advertising and other revenue for the most recent quarter, nearly double what it brought in for the same period two years prior. That amount is up 41% from the year-ago period.

Retailers including Target Corp and grocers such as Tesco Plc  have aggressively wooed big advertisers to their websites to drive sales through pop-up banners and search-bar keywords.

In July, Bentonville, Arkansas-based Walmart rolled out new features for its in-house advertising platform Walmart Media Group.

Walmart has seized many opportunities to scoop up online brands like Bonobos, which it purchased for $310 million in 2017, and Art.com, which it bought for an undisclosed amount in 2018.

In 2010, Walmart announced its new video-on-demand service with its acquisition of Vudu, which also offers a free ad-supported streaming option. However, Vudu still lags far behind the monthly viewership numbers that competitors Netflix and Hulu pull in, and Walmart sold it to Comcast Corp-owned Fandango Media LLC, a movie ticketing service, in April.

Investors are viewing Walmart’s play for TikTok as a potential win, and are raring to know more details.

“It’s really hard to put a value on the return they’re (Walmart) going to get from this” possible acquisition, said Randy Hare, portfolio manager at Huntington Private Bank.

“But clearly the market’s excited about this because this could really help Walmart with a new channel of advertising.”

Source:Reuters

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President Donald Trump on Friday gave the Chinese company ByteDance 90 days to divest itself of any assets used to support the popular TikTok app in the United States. 

Trump's executive order said there is credible evidence that leads me to believe that ByteDance might take action that threatens to impair the national security of the United States.

Trump last week ordered sweeping but vague bans on dealings with the Chinese owners of TikTok and the messaging app WeChat, saying they are a threat to US national security, foreign policy and the economy.

It remains unclear what the TikTok orders mean for the app's 100 million US users, many of them teenagers or young adults who use it to post and watch short-form videos.

Trump on Friday also ordered ByteDance to divest itself of "any data obtained or derived" from TikTok users in the U.S.

Microsoft is in talks to buy parts of TikTok.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany defended Trump's earlier TikTok and WeChat orders Thursday, telling reporters he was exercising his emergency authority under a 1977 law enabling the president to regulate international commerce to address unusual threats.

The administration is committed to protecting the American people from all cyber threats and these apps collect significant amounts of private data on users, said McEnany, adding that the Chinese government can access and use such data.

TikTok said it spent nearly a year trying to engage in good faith with the US government to address these concerns.

What we encountered instead was that the Administration paid no attention to facts, dictated terms of an agreement without going through standard legal processes, and tried to insert itself into negotiations between private businesses, the company's statement said.

Source: RSS

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Walmart Inc (WMT.O) is partnering with Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) in the software maker’s bid for Bytedance-owned TikTok, the world’s largest retailer said on Thursday.

ByteDance has been in talks to sell TikTok’s North American, Australian and New Zealand operations which could be worth $25 billion to $30 billion to companies including Microsoft and Oracle (ORCL.N), people with knowledge of the matter have told Reuters.

U.S. President Donald Trump has demanded that China’s ByteDance, which owns TikTok globally, sell its U.S. operations, citing potential national security risk due to the vast amount of private data the app is compiling on U.S. consumers.

“We are confident that a Walmart and Microsoft partnership would meet both the expectations of U.S. TikTok users while satisfying the concerns of U.S. government regulators,” the retailer said in a statement.

The two companies are two years into a five-year partnership as part of the retailer’s push for wider use of cloud and artificial intelligence.

Walmart said TikTok’s integrated e-commerce and advertising capabilities in other markets “is a clear benefit to creators and users in those markets.”

The retailer’s shares were up about 4.4% on the news.

source:reuters

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Elon Musk said on Thursday that Tesla Inc’s (TSLA.O) factory in Nevada was a target of a “serious” cybersecurity attack, confirming a media report that claimed an employee of the company helped the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) thwart the attack.

News website Teslarati said that the electric carmaker was the unnamed company in a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Justice on Tuesday about a Russian national's arrest, in connection with a planned attack on an unidentified company.

“This was a serious attack,” Musk said in a tweet, in response to the Teslarati article.

The Justice Department said that Egor Igorevich Kriuchkov, 27, a Russian national, was arrested and charged with conspiracy to intentionally cause damage to a protected computer by trying to recruit an employee to introduce a malware into a system.

The malware was aimed at extracting data from the network and then to threaten the company for ransom money, the statement said.

According to the Justice Department, Kriuchkov had promised the employee an incentive of $1 million upon introducing the malware into the system.

But the employee alerted the FBI, who were successful in thwarting the attack, a complaint filed by the FBI’s Las Vegas Field Office showed.

source:Reuters

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