Elon Musk shames marketers for the sharp decline in Twitter ad income
"Tesla Master" Elon Musk claims that advertising on the platform is "on the upswing" despite reports that Twitter is once again having problems with its ad revenues.
The New York Times reports that between April 1 and the first week of May, Twitter's U.S. advertising income fell by 59% from the same period in 2017, totaling $88 million, and that weekly ad revenue sales predictions are often missed.
Musk bemoaned the situation and blamed advertisers in a discussion on Twitter Spaces moderated by Robert F. Kennedy. He said: "Twitter has received enormous pressure from advertisers and has at least in the West, seen an advertising boycott from a number of firms. I believe that democracy is fundamentally being corrupted by this. And the general people ought to be indignant about this.
I want to thank the companies that have stayed with us, like Apple and Disney and many others, but for North America and Europe, we have seen about half of our advertising disappear overnight, just because we insist on free speech
Curious. Since Elon Musk took control of the platform, apprehension from advertisers has grown over concerns about a platform that blurs the lines between "free speech" and "hate speech," is experiencing a "unprecedented" rise in hate speech, fired the majority of his moderation team to combat hate speech, and is now replete with adult content like online gambling, drugs, and pornography.
It seems as if this might have been foreseen. So, YouTube had a similar issue. Advertisers are open about the fact that they stop marketing in connection with anything that contradicts their brand or that their consumers would find immoral.
