Advertisers’ pullout from Twitter gained steam on Friday amid growing concerns that disinformation and hate speech will be allowed to spread on the platform under the leadership of Elon Musk.
The Volkswagen Group joined several other companies in recommending that its car brands, which include Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley and Porsche, stop spending on Twitter over concerns that its ads will appear alongside problematic content. Danish brewing company Carlsberg Group said it had advised its marketing teams to do the same. Outdoor equipment and apparel retailer REI said it will pause posts as well as ad spend “given the uncertain future of Twitter’s ability to edit harmful content and ensure brand integrity for advertisers.” United Airlines spokeswoman Leslie Scott confirmed that the airline suspended the announcement on Twitter earlier this week.
Civil rights groups, including the GLAAD and the Anti-Defamation League, held a conference call Friday urging other companies to ditch Twitter, saying the mass layoffs there have undermined what they described as the already lean content moderation staff.
even mr. Musk acknowledged the decline in advertising, tweeting Friday morning that Twitter had “seen a massive drop in revenue,” which he blamed on activist groups pressuring advertisers.
Chaotic first week of mr. Musk’s ownership of Twitter hit Madison Avenue, as advertisers struggle to reconcile billionaire promises to make the platform safe for brands who have concerns about extremism outburst And the false stories one promotion by mr. Musk himself.
Elon Musk’s Twitter Acquisition
Fantastic deal. In April, Elon Musk made a $44 billion unwanted bid to the social media platform, saying he wanted to turn Twitter into a private business and allow people to speak more freely on the service. Here’s how the months-long battle ended:
In his tweet about faltering Twitter revenues, Mr. Musk said that “nothing has changed with the modification of content and we have done everything we can to please activists” – a claim that civil rights groups have denied.
A minute before his comment was published, ad tracking platform MediaRadar released statistics showing that the number of advertisers on Twitter has decreased since May, shortly after Mr. Mask display for the platform announceduntil September, when he was still Fighting to get out of the deal He purchased Twitter in April.
MediaRadar, which tracks ad campaigns for millions of companies, said October data, when Mr. Musk has taken over Twitter, and it won’t be available until later this month.
Twitter had 3,900 advertisers in May and 2,300 in August. The number rose to 2,900 in September, according to Media Radar. The analytics firm found that General Motors, which paused its Twitter spending last week, spent an average of $1.7 million per month on the platform.
There were over 1,000 new advertisers on the platform every month before July, when Mr. The feud between Musk and Twitter began to intensify and the number of new advertisers dropped to 200.
MediaRadar found that in September, there were 668 new advertisers. Todd Krezelman, CEO of MediaRadar, said in a statement that factors such as economic conditions likely played a role in the mass migration, as did uncertainty over Twitter’s ownership and content moderation policies.
said mr. Krezelman. added that mr. Musk plans to look for her Income sources outside of advertising It can mitigate any damage caused by Madison Avenue.
after mr. In Musk’s tweet, a coalition of civil rights groups and activists called a press conference to press for a global advertising boycott of Twitter.
Understanding Elon Musk’s Twitter Acquisition
“We are witnessing the real-time destruction of one of the most powerful communications platforms in the world,” Nicole Gill, executive director of the nonprofit group Accountable Tech, said during the call. “Unless Musk can aggressively enforce Twitter’s existing community standards, the platform is not safe for users or advertisers.”
Angelo Caruson, CEO of the progressive nonprofit Media Matters of America, said on the call that he has worked on several efforts to use the advertiser boycott to pressure social media companies to clean up their platforms. He said some of the advertisers he requests typically turn down his requests, saying reaching potential customers is a higher priority than focusing on Silicon Valley.
But after this week the Alliance of Activists reached out to the top 20 Twitter advertisers, including Anheuser-Busch, Disney and Procter & Gamble. All of the companies he has been in contact with have said they are either considering stopping spending or implementing one, Caruson said.
The two companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.
“I’ve never experienced that before,” Caruson said. “And I think that’s the most revealing thing, and it shows a real consensus about the current state of the crisis that Twitter is going through.”
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