buying tiktok for a skincare brand, ~$42k/mo. the roster we built in late 2024 is actively losing us money in 2026 and a lot of buyers are still in denial. tiktok's spark-ad scoring shifted around the q4 2025 shop-native push. the format the algo rewards now is not 2024 lo-fi pov, it's a tighter first 1.3s hook, a product reveal before second 4, and creator faces that read as a specific subculture not generic-pretty. first-watch hook rate dropped from 38% to 22% on the same briefs, cpm crept 31% in eleven weeks, 7-day click roas slid from 2.4 to 1.6 on the same audiences. the roster wasn't bad. the roster was obsolete. tried three sourcing channels to refresh. tiktok creator marketplace was a graveyard, 60% of the people we shortlisted hadn't posted a brand asset in 4+ months. backstage was better on the human side but every creator wanted a usage rights conversation that ate a week before anything shipped.…