The departure of advertisers from Twitter gained strength on Friday (4), amid growing fears that disinformation and hate speech could spread on the platform under the leadership of Elon Musk.
The Volkswagen Group has joined several other companies in recommending that its automotive brands, which include Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley and Porsche, suspend their spending on Twitter, fearing their ads could appear alongside problematic content. Danish brewer Carlsberg also said it advised its marketing teams to do the same. Outdoor apparel and apparel retailer REI said it will also halt postings, in addition to advertising spend, “given the uncertain future of Twitter’s ability to moderate harmful content and ensure the safety of advertisers’ brands.”
Civil rights groups held a conference call on Friday urging other companies to leave Twitter, saying the mass layoffs would be wiping out a content moderation team they said was already ineffective.
Even Musk acknowledged the drop in advertising, tweeting Friday morning that the platform “has seen a massive drop in revenue,” blaming activist groups pushing advertisers.
The chaotic first week of Musk’s Twitter tenure has whipped businesses around as advertisers struggle to reconcile the billionaire’s promises to make the platform safe for brands with concerns about a wave of extremism and false narratives, including one promoted by himself. Musk.
In his tweet about Twitter’s shaky billing, Musk said “nothing has changed in content moderation, and we’ve done everything we can to appease activists” — a claim debunked by civil rights groups.
A minute before he posted his comment, ad-tracking platform MediaRadar released statistics showing that the number of advertisers on Twitter dropped from May — shortly after Musk’s offer for the platform was announced — to September, when he was still struggling to get out. of the deal it made to buy Twitter in April.
MediaRadar, which tracks ad campaigns for millions of companies, said data from October, when Musk took over Twitter, won’t be available until late November.
Twitter had 3,900 advertisers in May and 2,300 in August. The number rose to 2,900 in September, according to MediaRadar. The analytics firm found that General Motors, which stopped its ads on Twitter last week, previously spent an average of $1.7 million a month on the platform.
There were over 1,000 new advertisers on the platform every month before July, when Musk’s feud with Twitter began to intensify and the number of new advertisers dropped to 200.
In September there were 668 new advertisers, according to MediaRadar. Factors such as economic conditions likely played a role in this exodus, as did uncertainty about Twitter’s content ownership and moderation policies, Todd Krizelman, CEO of MediaRadar, said in a statement.
“Clearly, this acquisition is challenging the confidence of advertisers,” said Krizelman. He added that Musk’s plans to look for revenue streams beyond advertising could mitigate any damage caused by the companies’ departure.
Following Musk’s tweet, a coalition of civil rights and activist groups convened a press conference to push for a global advertising boycott of Twitter.
“We are witnessing the real-time destruction of one of the most powerful communication platforms in the world,” Nicole Gill, executive director of the charity Accountable Tech, said on the call. “Unless Musk can enforce existing community standards on Twitter, the platform is not safe for users or advertisers.”
Angelo Carusone, CEO of the nonprofit Media Matters for America, said on the call that he worked on several initiatives to use advertiser boycotts to pressure social media companies to clean up their platforms. Typically, he said, some of the advertisers he seeks turn down his requests, saying reaching potential customers is a higher priority than defending a position in Silicon Valley.
But after the activist coalition this week reached out to Twitter’s top 20 advertisers, including Anheuser-Busch, Disney and Procter & Gamble, Carusone said all companies he’s communicated with have said they are considering or are already implementing a spending break. .
The companies did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.
“I’ve never experienced this before,” Carusone said. “And I think it’s the most revealing thing and it demonstrates a real consensus on the current state of the Twitter crisis.”
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
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