Xodus
Advertisers and the precious revenue they generate have fled X (formerly Twitter) since Elon Musk took over in October 2022, bringing with him a wave of hate speech, misinformation and racist rhetoric — much of it coming from his own account.
Now, the site’s already bleak marketing outlook is about to get even worse. New research from data firm Kantar suggests that a record 26 percent of advertisers plan to cut spending on Twitter next year, which could be a death sentence for a site whose revenues were already in freefall.
If CNN This is reportedly the largest withdrawal ever by a major advertising platform.
“Marketers are brand custodians and must have confidence in the platforms they use,” Gonca Bubani, director of Global Thought Leadership at Kantar, said in a statement, as quoted by The guard.
“X has changed so much in the last few years and can be unpredictable from one day to the next,” she added. “It’s hard to feel confident about the safety of your brand in that environment.”
Turntables
These statistics contribute to the climate of uncertainty surrounding Twitter's future, and that's probably what turns advertisers off most: they want stability, not volatility.
According to the report, which was compiled from interviews with 1,000 senior marketers and 18,000 consumers around the world, only four percent of marketers believe Twitter ads provide brand safety, while Google enjoys significantly more trust at 39 percent.
The general attitude towards the platform has also soured. In 2022, 15 percent of marketers were positive about Twitter ads. Since then, it has completely turned around: now 21 percent of marketers are positive unfavorable.
“Advertisers have been shifting their marketing spend from X for a number of years,” Bubani said, The guard“The strong acceleration of this trend over the past 12 months means a reversal seems unlikely.”
Conversely, consumer preference for ads has increased as they are happier to see fewer ads. However, the user base is shrinking and we suspect that this increase would be offset by the large number of bots plaguing the platform.
Musk interference
Musk's personal interventions in the situation have failed to stop the bleeding.
If he did anything, it was to tell advertisers, “Go fuck yourself,” during an onstage tirade in November 2023. That now looks like a legendary blunder, as advertising revenue dried up, leading to a staggering 53 percent drop in revenue in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.
A humbled Musk tried to walk back his comments in June, pleading with advertisers to come back. The following month, he changed his tune again, suing them for not buying ads on his platform and declaring “war” to shut it down altogether. All in all, not the kind of leadership that inspires confidence in the site as a stable place to spend ad dollars.
A Twitter spokesperson said that “advertisers know that X now offers stronger brand safety, performance and analytics capabilities than ever before, while usage levels are at an all-time high,” The guard“Our brand safety rate is 99 percent on average, as validated by DoubleVerify and Integral Ads Science, demonstrated by the majority of advertisers increasing their investment in X, as shown by Kantar data.”
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