Math Problem For Linda Yaccarino: If 90% Of The Top Advertisers Have Come Back, But Are Only Spending 10% Of What They Used To, How Screwed Are You?
from the shell-game dept
Last week, we highlighted how it appears that exTwitter’s ad revenue remains in freefall.
We noted that exTwitter CEO-in-name-only Linda Yaccarino had just gone on stage at the Code Conference to try to dismiss the idea that the ad revenue was in trouble, claiming that reports of a 60% decline were “months and months old” information, even though it came from Elon Musk directly just weeks earlier:
The other thing that Yaccarino said to try to convince everyone that the clown car wasn’t veering completely off the track was that “90% of the top 100 advertisers have returned to the platform.” As we noted at the time, the wording of this is kinda strange, and seems purposely designed to mislead people into thinking the the company’s advertising was coming back to old levels.
Except… that’s clearly not true. Media Matters has been using ad tracking tools to see how much advertisers are spending on exTwitter, and even the ones that are coming back are basically spending nothing. Some embarrassingly so. So, when Yaccarino crows that “Visa” has come back to advertising on the platform, she leaves out that they spent $10 according to the analysis.
What’s more, during Yaccarino’s tenure as CEO, the majority of Twitter’s top 100 advertisers pre-Musk have spent just a fraction — at least 90% less — of what they spent in the 12 weeks prior to Musk’s acquisition.
During the September 27 interview, Yaccarino also claimed, “In the last 12 weeks alone, about 1,500 [advertisers] have returned. So whether it is small business or big brands, right? Like AT&T, Visa, Nissan, all returning.” Of those three companies she specifically mentioned, AT&T is the only one that was a top advertiser pre-Musk, and the company has spent just $781 in the last 12 weeks — 99.96% less than the more than $1.77 million it spent during the 12 weeks before Musk’s acquisition.
Visa and Nissan are similarly spending just a fraction of what they spent pre-Musk. Visa spent just $10, and Nissan spent just $687, in the last 12 weeks — 99.99% and 99.77% less than they respectively spent during the 12 weeks before Musk’s acquisition.
According to a June report from Reuters, Yaccarino similarly boasted to investors that Walmart had resumed advertising. But Walmart spent just over $100,000 on X ads in the last 12 weeks — 91% less than the $1.1 million it spent during the 12 weeks pre-Musk.
Even the company’s top advertiser pre-Musk, HBO, spent only nearly $23,500 in the last 12 weeks — 99.9% less than the $28.3 million it had spent during the 12 weeks before Musk’s acquisition.
It sure sounds like part of Yaccarino’s strategy is to pretend that everything is coming back by convincing big name advertisers to “just try us out again” at a tiny, tiny ad spend (perhaps heavily discounted as well), just so she can tell the media and other advertisers that all these advertisers are “coming back,” while leaving out the details of how little they’ve committed.
Filed Under: ads, advertising, elon musk, linda yaccarino
Companies: nissan, twitter, visa, walmart, x
Comments on “Math Problem For Linda Yaccarino: If 90% Of The Top Advertisers Have Come Back, But Are Only Spending 10% Of What They Used To, How Screwed Are You?”
But on the plus side, it’s never been easier to find testosterone supplements, crypto scams, custody lawyers, and rightwing YouTube channels!
Twitter’s remaining advertisers really do paint a picture of who still uses the site.
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And bots, you forgot bots. I get 10 followers a day of pretty girls wanting me to goto their dating site (it all the same site with different addresses) and hit them up. They have 1-5 followers and are following 3000 or so. Maybe its just me.
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But.. but.. Elon cleaned up the bots!
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Not only is the “advertising” nearly 100% spam, but on the rare occasions I find myself there these days, I continuously see obvious spammers/scammers with Blue Checks and thousands of Likes. Obviously there are massive networks of fake, paid accounts pushing scams.
It’s literally impossible that Elon doesn’t see the mess he’s made dozens of times per day.
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The changes to the blue checks are a scammer’s wet dream. They used to indicate one thing – that the person posting was verified to be who they claim to be. But, the right-wing that Musk is courting decided that because (reputable journalist with a track record) was verified and (anonymous agitator with a name like catturd2) was not meant that they were unfairly promoting the left.
So, Musk decided to sell off the check to anyone who wanted to pay and amplify them, so while it’s now useless for verification, it’s a very cheap way of promoting bad things to an audience who might be confused by the change in meaning.
It’s also possible that he doesn’t see the problems – he seems to spend most of his time Tweeting, and only interacting with those who agree with him, so he won’t be exposed to differing ideas or people who just stopped trying.
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The last time he ran into someone with views differing from his it was considered such a bad case of harassment by this user that said user got banned for it.
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Don’t forget about the boner enlarging pills, because Elmo’s nothing if not a sad little prick.
With the tiny ad spends, I’ve been wondering if it’s not just some contractual issue. That is, they cancelled but the contract say they still have to buy ads for X months/years before they’re compliant. So, they buy as little as the contract will allow to get out of it.
I could be wrong, but otherwise Visa spending $10 doesn’t make much sense, the return on thathey won’t t would probably be less than they’d spend on employing someone to reopen the account.
I suspect it’s just another “technically true” thing, where advertisers are “returning” so the fanboys will think they’re back on the upswing, but they won’t bother looking at the details past the headlines.
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It probably cost Visa more than $10 for the employee-time to set up the advertising.
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What does that buy? An ad shown a single time to one user?
Smells like a bribe.
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A… ten dollar bribe?
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Well we ARE talking about the guy who has been doing fire sales of furniture (and other items) thinking it would help with the multi million per day losses.
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My bet is Twitter offered them a ton of free impressions with any ad buy, so Visa said “Okay, here’s $10 for a few impressions.” and got a bunch of free ad impressions for basically nothing.
Re: 'Nice brand you got there, be a shame if you left and someone claimed it...'
My first thought was similar but along a different line, namely ‘if you spend any amount of advertising money we’ll pay a little more attention and try to prevent brand fraud for your company.’
Given ‘verification’ status is worse than useless on Twitter these days and therefore even setting aside the explosion in ‘questionable’ content a company setting up shop there is just begging to be impersonated I struggle to think of any other reasons than contractual obligations or trying to avoid fraud for a company to keep spending money and time there.
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Maybe theses brands want to ensure their account will not be deleted (without any warning, as usual), like for the NPR account, and given to anybody (willing to pay 8$ a month for it). Because 10$ seems nothing even for a big company with all the advertising tools to decide if it’s worth it.
It also may be a 99,9% discount for companies that promise to stay engaged for years, and then hope that X would be deleted before the end of the contract.
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That’s probably it. If I were Visa, I’d keep my money and then sic the lawyers on Elon when of course some jackass hijacks the account.
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Maybe it’s a sarcastic commentary on Visa’s part.
Visa spending $10 on Twitter ads is a good enough punchline to end the joke that Twitter is now.
Magic numbers can be a hell of a drug.
'The advertisers are back!' 'And spending how much?' 'Why's that matter?'
I’d say being thrown some not-even-pocket-change amounts of advertising money has got to sting but given what a radioactive dumpsterfire the site is and how desperate those running it seem to be for any source of income I suppose they’re cheering with glee to get whatever they can, if for no other reason than to try to use that information to try to con gullible advertisers to give them some real money.
You know you’ve fucked up as a company when even AT&T, an infamously shitty company that even bankrolled OAN, won’t spend more than $1000/quarter advertising on your platform that’s full of right-whingers and bile.
“How Screwed Are You?”, referring to Linda? Just the other day you mentioned how CEOs tend to “fail upward”, so… the CEO is probably not very screwed. Take credit for the successes, blame the failures on Elon’s interference—no interviewer will doubt it—and eventually collect a “gold-plated” severance package before getting a higher-paying job elsewhere. (Or maybe collect the money after getting a job elsewhere and suing Elon, but that’s no big deal; a number of law firms are getting pretty good at that.)
Spam
Dude, this isn’t twitter…