Ex-Twitter Resorts To Threatening Companies It Will Take Away Their Verification If They Don’t Start Buying More Ads

Failures

from the carrot-and-stick-and-stick-and-stick dept

It’s no secret that Elon Musk is desperate for advertisers to return to the platform. He just recently admitted that the company is still cashflow negative and that around 50% of advertisers have left (other reports say the number is bigger). This is despite his earlier claims that the company would break even on a cashflow basis in Q2 (not to mention, despite not paying a bunch of bills).

Basically ever since he took over and lots of advertisers bailed out, directly in response to Elon’s self-created liability, the company has made a few desperate moves to lure them back. Back in February, we wrote about the company promising $250,000 in free ads if companies would spend $250,000 in ads. It didn’t seem to work.

Hell, it’s pretty obvious that the reason Elon hired Linda Yaccarino to play the role of Chief Marketing Officer (but with a shiny-if-misleading CEO title) was her strong relationships with big advertisers.

But, as the Wall Street Journal is reporting, it appears that the “carrot” approach of deeply discounted advertising isn’t working well enough on its own. Ex-Twitter is now breaking out some sticks to try to pressure companies into advertising:

X also warned advertisers that beginning Aug. 7, brands’ accounts will lose their verification—a gold check mark that indicates their account truly represents their brand—if they haven’t spent at least $1,000 on ads in the previous 30 days or $6,000 on ads in the previous 180 days, according to the email.

So, look, we know already that Elon simply cannot wrap his mind around the purpose of Twitter verification. I mean, the Twitter Blue debacle is well understood by everyone but Musk. The whole thing was so dumb, and so disastrous to trust and brand safety on the platform that it drove away plenty of companies, leading the company to make a hasty change and bring back some form of the old verification in the form of “gold checkmarks” for “some” businesses.

It seemed transparently obvious that these gold checkmarks were going to companies that Twitter wanted to appease so they would continue advertising.

And, when looked at through that lens, you can totally understand why the company is frustrated that the companies they “gifted” gold checkmarks to aren’t returning the favor by advertising. Hence this little shakedown.

“Nice gold check mark you got there. You wouldn’t want anything to, uh, happen to it, y’know?”

But, really, this seems like the kind of move likely to drive away advertisers than retain them. It’s just yet another reason not to trust the platform or Elon, who will change the terms of whatever he agrees to to benefit himself in the end.

Of course, the WSJ article also notes that Twitter is, once again, drastically discounting ad buys:

It is offering 50% off any new bookings of those ads until July 31, among other discounts. “The goal of these discounts is to help our advertisers gain reach during crucial moments on Twitter such as the Women’s World Cup,” one of the emails read.

As a separate point, I’ll just note that, back in February, they were talking about 50% off ads for $250,000 spends. Now they’re trying to cajole and coax companies into spending… $1,000.

Things must be rough on the revenue front.

Filed Under: advertising, elon musk, gold check, linda yaccarino, shakedown, threats
Companies: twitter, x