MOSCOW (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 23rd November, 2022) More than one-third of Twitter's top 100 advertisers have stopped putting ads on the social media platform in the two weeks following Elon Musk's takeover of the company, whose revenue is heavily dependent on ads, The Washington Post reported on Wednesday, citing market research data.
The list of the firms that have not recently advertised on Twitter includes 14 of the network's top 50 advertisers, the newspaper found in data compiled by the Pathmatics market research company. These are brands such as US car maker Jeep, confectionery manufacturer Mars, food producer Kellogg, telecommunications conglomerate Verizon and German pharmaceutical company Merck.
Earlier this autumn, several major companies, including German car maker Audi, US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, food manufacturer General Mills, confectionery producer Mondelez International and French cosmetics giant L'Oreal, also announced they were suspending advertising on Twitter due to Musk's takeover.
The decrease in ads is likely to have negative impact on the social network, given that in 2021, around 90% of its $5 billion revenue came from advertising, The Washington Post reported.
Musk has linked the falling number of ads and the related drop in revenue to the pressure exerted by social and human rights activists on advertisers. In this regard, the US billionaire has hastened to assure the public that Twitter had not changed its content moderation policy despite fears.
However, Kieley Taylor, the global head of partnerships at GroupM � a key advertising agency representing blue chip brands � said in October that some brands were mulling leaving Twitter if former US President Donald Trump was unblocked on the platform. In particular, about 10 GroupM clients have instructed the agency to suspend their ads on Twitter if Trump's account is unblocked, Taylor said, adding that other clients had taken a wait-and-see attitude.
US company Twitter Inc. was founded in 2006. The company's main product is a social network for exchanging short messages. In late October, Musk bought the company for $44 billion. In November, a little over a week after taking over, Musk started laying off the company's workers in a bid to place Twitter "on a healthy path," which raised a wave of public criticism. On November 20, Twitter also unblocked Trump's account, banned after the US Capitol attack on January 6, 2021, as the majority of participants in a survey conducted by Musk voted in favor of the measure.
