If Microsoft successfully spends tens of billions of dollars to purchase TikTok, the best thing it could do to recoup that money may be to do not much at all. “Microsoft acquired LinkedIn and has left it largely to operate independently,” said Jeremy Hull, svp of innovation at iProspect. Whereas Facebook has ingested Instagram into its broader advertising platform — as Yahoo tried and failed to do with Tumblr — Microsoft has largely left LinkedIn’s advertising business untouched. Read more below.

• If Microsoft succeeds in buying TikTok, its involvement in the platform's ad business should be limited to developing its back-end reporting, say agency executives.
• For Digiday+ members, as some holding company agencies have started to open their offices, or announced plans to do so soon, employee anxiety about return policies is starting to build.
• In the latest episode of Digiday's The New Normal, Jeff Carvalho discusses how legacy luxury brands need to adapt their marketing to champion accessibility over exclusivity.
• Dozens of copycat podcasts distributed by Spotify-owned hosting platform Anchor.fm have swamped the ecosystem.