Ad Revenue On ExTwitter Still In Free Fall In Second Year Of Elon’s Reign
from the it-can-keep-going-lower-too dept
Turns out that when you tell advertisers to go fuck themselves, sue the advertisers who did so, and then promise you won’t do anything to stop the worst people in the world from spewing hate and bigotry on your platform, it might not be great for business.
Who knew? Elon, apparently.
Last week we noted that ad execs were saying that Elon’s latest antics were only making them even less interested in advertising on ExTwitter, but there hasn’t been as much talk lately about the financial situation the company is in.
In the first year after Elon took over, there were a number of reports suggesting ad revenue dropped somewhere between 50% and 70%. Elon has admitted that the company’s overall valuation of the company is probably down by nearly 60%.
But most of that was all talking about where it was in that first year post Elon. Since then, there’s been little data on how things were actually going. Linda Yaccarino has insisted that many of the advertisers who left came back, though when people looked at the details, it looked like a few that had come back only dipped their toes in the ExTwitter waters, rather than fully coming back.
And indeed, all we’ve been hearing this year is that Musk and Yaccarino are trying to woo back advertisers. Again. And again. Though, suing them isn’t doing them any favors.
However, buried in a recent Fortune article is the first time I’ve seen any data showing how badly the second year of Elon has gone. While the main focus of the article is on how Elon may have to sell some more of his Tesla stock to fund ExTwitter, it notes that ad revenue has continued to drop and was 53% lower than it was in 2023 (i.e., already after Elon had taken over, and many advertisers had bailed).
And the article says that ad revenue is down an astounding 84% from when Elon took over, based on an analysis by Bradford Ferguson, the chief investment officer at an asset management firm:
Ferguson based his assessment on internal second-quarter figures recently obtained by the New York Times. According to this report, X booked $114 million worth of revenue in the U.S., its largest market by far. This represented a 25% drop over the preceding three months and a 53% drop over the year-ago period.
That already sounds bad. But it gets worse. The last publicly available figures prior to Musk’s acquisition, from Q2 of 2022, had revenue at $661 million. After you account for inflation, revenue has actually collapsed by 84%, in today’s dollars.
Ouch.
A separate report from Quartz (pulling from MediaRadar research) suggests the numbers aren’t quite that dire, but they still see a 24% decline in 2024 compared to 2023. And when the 24% decline is the better report, you know you’re in serious trouble.
Advertisers apparently spent almost $744 million on X, formerly known as Twitter, during the first six months of 2024. That’s about 24% lower than the more than $982 million advertisers dropped on the platform in the first half of 2023, according to ad-tracking company MediaRadar.
No matter how you look at it, it appears that in the second year of Elon’s control, advertising revenue remains in free fall.
No wonder he’s resorted to suing. Platforming more awful people and undermining each deal that Yaccarino brings in hasn’t magically helped turn things around.
Anyway, for no reason at all, I’ll just remind people that Elon’s pitch to investors to help fund some of the $44 billion takeover of Twitter was that he would increase revenue to $26.4 billion by 2028. And, yes, the plan was to diversify that revenue, but his pitch deck said that ad revenue would generate $12 billion by 2028. This would mean basically doubling the ~$6 billion in ad revenue the company was making at the time Elon purchased it. But now that’s been cut to maybe $1.5 billion and probably less.
I’m guessing that Elon and Linda might fall a wee bit short of their target here.
Filed Under: advertisers, advertising, elon musk, linda yaccarino, revenue
Companies: tesla, twitter, x
Comments on “Ad Revenue On ExTwitter Still In Free Fall In Second Year Of Elon’s Reign”
When a platform has a manchild with a fragile ego in charge advertisers are going to bail on spending their coin there.
No amount of 'price reduction' will turn a cyanide and sewage soda tempting
Imagine that, when you court the most toxic people on the planet to hang out at your place people whose entire job is all about making sure their reputations are as squeaky clean as possible don’t want to hang out with you or give you money for the ‘privilege’ of doing so…
While the main focus of the article is on how Elon may have to sell some more of his Tesla stock to fund ExTwitter, it notes that ad revenue has continued to drop and was 53% lower than it was in 2023 (i.e., already after Elon had taken over, and many advertisers had bailed).
Well that can’t be right, why no less than a judge recently said that there is absolutely no link between Twitter and Tesla, to the point that even suggesting such a link is grounds for punishment.
Musk is 100% id
And he’s baffled that anyone even cares about the content they’re advertising on. He’ll never change course because he thinks he is the greatest genius that ever lived. Eventually, TwiX will go bankrupt and we won’t be forced to listen to him anymore. I mean seriously — who pays for the opportunity to be insulted?
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If M&M Mars marketing department is any good, they’ve already located you post and are in panic mode. I’m sure they don’t want their candy bar associated with a dumpster fire.
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He’s almost certainly going to have to unload TSLA stock at some point to keep ExTwat on life support. Or just bankrupt it like his buddy Trump does with all his “businesses.”
He tried charging for blue checks, firing employees, not paying severance, not paying lawyers, not paying the previous CEO, not paying rent, ending remote work, disconnecting random servers, returning previously banned accounts, suing critics, launching an LLM, what else could one man possibly do to make a company profitable?
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I think Elon’s best bet (as in something he has at least a snow balls change in hell of actually doing) is finding a sucker willing to pay $88B USD for it. Any other alternatives have suck long odds for Elon actually succeeding at them, that they aren’t work considering.
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He’s tried nothing and he’s all out of ideas!
There is a lot of different numbers, basis, inflation… but roughly, Twitter made about $4.5B from ads in 2021, $4B in 2022, $3B in 2023, but now Twitter couldn’t expect more than $2.25B for 2024 (expecting the last quarter is the highest, maybe not this year).
Recent numbers are harder to get (since the company is not public anymore), for instance, how much come from premium accounts? And how much Elon personally pours into Twitter (maybe by buying ads)? How much is costing xAI/Grok in Twitter (even there are “separate” companies)? How much he’s saving from not paying bills? How much all his lawsuits are costing? I’m not even sure Elon knows.
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He doesn’t have to know. That’s what he has accountants for. (And, he pays them not to know, either. So, nobody knows.)
For me people with more than a few hundred million got their money via precarious labor exploration and a few hits on civil and criminal law. There’s no other way to be that rich. Specially being as dumb as Melon.
Ah the sweet emerald mines….
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Yup. Ain’t nobody working hard enough to earn all that.
I knew it was getting bad when the ads went from once in a while for Verizon, ATT, Comcast etc, to having 3-4 ads between 6-7 posts and the ads are for pecker enlargers and dildos. Some pot and gummies too.
I suspect I speak for a large majority of people and their reaction to this news with this gif.
https://media4.giphy.com/media/v1.Y2lkPTc5MGI3NjExdzlwbzFtbnk1dDdicnMzanEyb2phNWc0ZXhhZWt0OGQ1ZGZ2NjZ3dCZlcD12MV9pbnRlcm5hbF9naWZfYnlfaWQmY3Q9Zw/anYBNhqT2BYcg/giphy.webp
That gross sound you’re hearing is bratty Matty crying into his waifu pillow of Elmo.
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It’s not what you think! That JD Vance’s cum, not mine!
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And even that – the story you’re referencing – turns out to be a fiction along the same lines as catboxes in schools.
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IDK what you mean I bought like a 10 jars of JD Vance’s cum to show the liberals how normal I am.
And now, there’s this…
https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musks-twitter-takeover-is-now-the-worst-buyout-for-banks-since-the-financial-crisis-3f4272cb
It’s worse than you suggest. In his zeal to try to squeeze money out of the platform, he is destroying the value in it for ordinary users, and because those ordinary users are then leaving, advertisers are also losing interest.