Twitter is once again in trouble, with its ad revenue reportedly dropping drastically, but Elon Musk says advertising on the platform is “on the upswing”.
According to the New York Times, Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue has been down 59% from last year between April 1 and the first week in May, landing at $88 million and weekly ad revenue sales projections are regularly missed.
In a conversation held on Twitter Spaces hosted by Robert F. Kennedy, Musk lamented this situation and blamed advertisers, saying: “Twitter has seen extreme pressure from advertisers and has at least in the West, seen an advertising boycott from a lot of companies. I think this is a fundamental corruption of democracy. And the public should be absolutely outraged by this.”
“I would like to, for sure, thank those companies that have stuck with us like Apple and Disney and many others, but we have for North America and Europe seen roughly half of our advertising disappear overnight, simply because we insist on free speech.“
Curious. Apprehension from advertisers has been building since Elon Musk’s takeover of the platform, with concerns around a platform that does not distinct “free speech” from “hate speech”, is seeing an “unprecedented” rise in hate speech, fired a majority of his moderation team in order to fight hate speech, and is now rife with adult content, including online gambling, drugs and pornography.
It’s almost like this could have been easily predicted. It’s a situation that YouTube has already been through once with “the adpocalypse” and advertisers are not quiet about the fact that they pull marketing in association with anything that goes against their brand or that their users might consider unethical.
