Hundreds of advertisers stopped spending on Twitter after Elon Musk completed a $44 billion deal to take over the microblogging website, wary of change at the social media platform. Months later, many still haven’t returned despite the sales team’s efforts to woo them back with huge discounts and new safety equipment.
According to Pathmatics estimates, top advertisers on Twitter spent $71 million on ads from September to October last year, while that figure dropped to just $7.6 million (an 89% drop) in the previous two months, Bloomberg News reported.
Elon Musk previously said that the company’s revenue has declined by 50% since October, despite a slight increase in daily users. The drop in revenue has resulted in a sharp drop in advertising.
Twitter’s top advertising clients include HBO, Amazon, IBM and Coca-Cola. Major brands such as Mondelez International Inc, The Coca-Cola Co, Merck & Co, Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc and AT&T Inc still had not resumed ad spending on the platform as of February.
People familiar with the situation said major media agencies such as IPG and Horizon Media, which advised clients to consider halting or suspending their Twitter campaigns after Musk takes over, have so far encouraged marketers to return. not done.
“Our initial recommendation to customers after Musk took over was a ‘red light’ like stop spending. We are still advising customers to proceed with caution – the light has turned to ‘amber’ because The company still appears to be in a chaotic state,” one media buyer cited by Bloomberg said.
Musk has taken steps to boost advertiser confidence. Shortly after the billionaire acquired the San Francisco-based company, Twitter tried to win back wary advertising customers by introducing a new product that would block marketers from showing their ads alongside Tweets that contain certain Contains keywords or images – called adjacent controls.
Last year, Twitter began offering advertisers huge rebates — in some cases hundreds of thousands of dollars in free ads — if they would start spending again.
