Short-Form Video Is the New SEO — And Most Agencies Are Still Asleep at the Wheel
Discovery behavior has fundamentally shifted. Nearly half of U.S. consumers now use TikTok as a search engine, and brands across auto, legal, media, and SaaS have already figured out how to win there. So why are so many marketing agencies still hesitant to treat short-form video as a serious channel — and what does it look like when brands actually get it right?
Is TikTok Dead for B2B — Or Is There Actually a Play Here for New York Businesses?
For two years, every New York business owner with a TikTok account asked the same question: should I even bother? The platform spent 2025 in legal limbo — briefly shut down, restored by executive order, operating under permanent ban threat while a deal was negotiated behind closed doors. That uncertainty is now resolved. TikTok closed its U.S. ownership deal in January 2026 and the ban has been permanently averted. So the existential question has an answer. The more interesting question for New York B2B businesses is the strategic one: with 170 million U.S. users, an engagement rate 8 times higher than Instagram, and nearly half of corporate decision-makers on the platform weekly — is there actually a play here for companies selling professional services, technology, finance, and real estate? The honest answer is more nuanced than either the enthusiasts or the skeptics want to admit.