Exactly two years ago today (Oct. 28), billionaire Elon Musk started his first day as owner / CEO of then-Twitter. As the platform transformed into a hotbed of divisive content, many marketers swiftly pulled their ad dollars, anxious about their brands being tied to either controversial topics or Musk himself. Now, as the dust settles, the answer to the question of whether advertisers will reconsider their stance has never been more complex.
By now, the reasons for the standoff between Musk and advertisers are well-known and well-documented. But here’s a quick recap: After Musk’s takeover, advertisers pulled back from Twitter due to concerns over content moderation, erratic policy chances and brand safety.
This created a storm of uncertainty regarding the platform’s stability and user experience, leading many marketers to rethink their advertising strategies on what was then still Twitter. They realized Musk had become inextricably linked to the platform, and found that hard to reconcile.
“I think what we effectively have with brand safety is two completely different topics,” said Tom Goodwin, former Twitter advertiser and co-founder of business transformation agency All We Have Is Now. “We have one which is about the quality of the content you’re next to. And then we have a completely different topic, which is sometimes put together, about whether advertisers are prepared to put money into supporting the owner of a media channel.”
A shift in leadership
Former NBCUniversal sales chief Linda Yaccarino was brought in in an attempt to alleviate those tensions last spring, but her efforts have instead highlighted the reasons why those tensions arose in the first place.
For example, in April, as CEO, Yaccarino hosted a client council for 75 ad industry execs in London. Afterward, one senior executive who attended that meeting spoke to the complexity of the issue about advertisers feelings about the platform and advertising on it.
“I came out of that meeting feeling positive, thinking there’s a lot that we can work with [on X] with our clients,” they told Digiday at the time.
However, despite the positive impression, concerns about advertising on the platform remain unresolved.
“It doesn’t matter how good we felt coming out of that room, fundamentally, there is still the Elon factor,” said the senior exec. “It’s very hard for advertisers to move forward when the PR around him as an individual is so negative.”
Yaccarino is aware of this challenge.
Throughout her first year as CEO, she has emphasized the need for advertisers to separate X as a platform from Musk as an individual, acknowledging that he will act independently and won’t be controlled by external expectations.
She has also worked to strengthen the roster of ad execs at X to effectively communicate this message.
Yaccarino has bolstered both X’s brand safety and advertising teams with the hires of Kylie McRoberts (head of safety), Yale Cohen (head of brand safety and advertiser solutions) and Angela Zepeda (global head of marketing).
With these hires, X has tried to be more collaborative with the industry, and has made moves like re-engaging with the Trustworthy Accountability Group earlier this year to secure its brand safety certification. Yaccarino has hosted global client council meetings focused on brand safety and also conducted conference calls with key partners to discuss new features and partnerships. So far, the team has prioritized video content, brought back its transparency report and worked to improve ad units, although they still lag behind competitors.
On the brand safety front, both Goodwin and Jack Johnston, senior social innovation director at Tinuiti, said they believe that X’s tools are in line with its platform peers, and those tools work in the ways they should.
“The safety has been less about the advertiser tools available, and more about the other content away from your brand,” Johnston added. “There’s nothing a brand can do to shape or influence that.”
He means that the tools do what they should do at a basic level, in so far as they sandwich an ad between two nicer pieces of content. But outside of that sandwich, the sentiment and content surrounding that is still a concern.
“When marketers go on X and see a lot of inflammatory comments immediately in their own feeds, they become concerned that others are going to see it, and it won’t be very long until somebody takes a screenshot,” said one senior ad exec, who preferred to remain anonymous. “So even though they’re not advertising against that context, it goes back to the cautious element of it.”
Until this changes, it is unlikely that marketers will make any major changes to their stance on advertising again on X — not in any meaningful way, that is. Johnston, for example, said his team is still pursuing opportunities and they still do have some clients who are interested in putting ad spend toward X, along with partnerships they work on, but it’s very much based on individual brand decisions.
X by the numbers
When it comes to total ad spend globally, between September 2023 and August 2024, X only accounted for 1%, according to data company Guideline. To compare, Meta took 60% and TikTok took 20%, while Snapchat and Pinterest took 9% and 3%, respectively. Additionally, 72 out of the top 100 spending U.S. advertisers on X from October 2022 no longer invested in the platform as of September 2024, according to data from market intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Further, 26% of marketers are planning to reduce ad spend on X in 2025, according to Kantar’s Media Reactions 2024 report.
Despite new additions to X’s ad sales team and shifts in the way it markets itself to the industry, whether the platform can shift that post-Musk narrative remains to be seen.
Take the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity this past June, for example. Yaccarino’s personal assistant escorted ad execs through the lobby of the Carlton Hotel to the X’s plush 900-square-foot suite where company execs, including Yaccarino, took their meetings. Flashy, sure. But, ultimately, very low key, compared to prior years for Twitter, when the platform would take over the beach at the event.
And when Yaccarino wasn’t doing business there, she was on stage, making her presence known. One example was her interview with Axios’ Sarah Fischer at the publication’s villa in the hills. While the CEO was able to talk through some of the exciting new sports partnerships X was making, ultimately, the conversation turned, yet again, to Musk.
The latest challenge
Fast forward to August, and nothing has really epitomized X’s ongoing standoff with marketers more than its dealings with the World Federation of Advertisers.
What started out as a threat resulted in Musk’s latest legal affair, in which X actively filed suit against the trade body along with four named advertisers (CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever). Why? Similar to the case with previous lawsuits, Musk believes WFA and the named advertisers conspired to withhold ad dollars from X. The result? So far, the WFA has since shut down the Global Alliance for Responsible Advertisers (GARM).
Seemingly, ad revenue (or lack thereof) is still an issue for the platform. Otherwise, why would Musk choose to sue a trade body, when the chances of winning such a case aren’t necessarily clear?
More interestingly, Unilever has since been dropped from the WFA lawsuit — Unilever, which was understood to be the most influential voice of the WFA. “X is pleased to have reached an agreement with Unilever and to continue our partnership with them on the platform,” was the official message posted by the platform on this latest development. The word “partnership” here says a lot. While the terms of the settlement are only known to X and Unilever execs, what it does tell the rest of the industry is that X can’t really be all that bad. If it were, why would an advertiser enter into such an agreement if the platform was as big of a risk as it’s considered to be?
What this sequence of events spotlights gets to the crux of the capricious relationship Musk’s X has with advertisers: the decision to advertise on X isn’t simply black and white anymore. There are many shades of gray that need to be considered here. Advertisers make a number of calculations into the risk-reward factor before investing anywhere. X is no different.
“I think brands would be far more forgiving if X had big growth numbers and really new, innovative ad formats. It would then be a very different conversation,” said the senior ad exec. “You’d still have brands that feel it’s not appropriate for the political reasons, but you’d have a lot that would at least take a second glance and really consider it even if there’s a bit of risk, and it takes effort to overcome that risk.”
