Twitter has been making headlines ever since Elon Musk took over the company in October 2022. He, as temporary CEO, made several changes at the company, including the layoffs of thousands of employees, the end of the work-from-home culture and price tagging account verification, among many others. The Twitter checkmark programme will be made available to all users on December 2, 2022, with the intention of reducing Twitter’s reliance on its advertising business.
However, the aggressive moves made by Musk have resulted in more setbacks than benefits. Twitter has already lost 50 of its top 100 advertisers on its platform in less than 30 days.
“50 of the top 100 advertisers have either announced or seemingly stopped advertising on Twitter,” according to Media Matters.
Since 2020, close to $2 billion has been spent on the Twitter platform by these top 50 advertisers. Over $750 million was spent on Twitter advertising in 2022 alone.
In addition, seven advertisers appeared to be slowing down the frequency of their advertising on Twitter to almost nothing. Since 2020, these seven advertisers have spent over $255 million on Twitter ads. While nearly $118 million was spent on advertising in 2022 alone.
It is important to note that in Q2 2022, which ended on June 30, 2022, Twitter ads revenue was $1.076 billion, representing a whopping 91.45% of the company’s total revenue. However, the share of advertising revenue is expected to decline in the upcoming quarters.
One Twitter user, who is the director of a B2B tech company, tweeted reasons for pausing ads on the platform.
Twitter Lost Top 50 Advertisers
The companies on the list below are “quiet quitters,” according to the Media Matters’ analysis of Pathmatics data. These companies have stopped advertising on Twitter following direct outreach, controversies, and warnings from media buyers. An asterisk (*) sign indicates that these companies have either issued a statement or publicly announced that they will no longer be running advertisements on Twitter.
- Abbott Laboratories
- Allstate Corporation
- AMC Networks
- American Express Company
- AT&T
- Big Heart Petcare
- BlackRock, Inc.
- BlueTriton Brands, Inc.
- Boston Beer Company
- CA Lottery (California State Lottery)
- CenturyLink (Lumen Technologies, Inc.)
- Chanel
- Chevrolet*
- Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc.*
- Citigroup, Inc.
- CNN
- Dell
- Diageo
- DirecTV
- Discover Financial Services
- Fidelity
- First National Realty Partners
- Ford*
- Heineken N.V.
- Hewlett-Packard (HP)
- Hilton Worldwide
- Inspire Brands, Inc.
- Jeep*
- Kellogg Company
- Kohl’s Department Stores, Inc.
- Kyndryl*
- LinkedIn Corporation
- MailChimp (The Rocket Science Group)
- Marriott International, Inc.
- Mars Petcare
- Mars, Incorporated
- Merck & Co. (Merck Sharp & Dohme MSD)*
- Meta Platforms, Inc. (formerly Facebook, Inc.)
- MoneyWise (Wise Publishing, Inc.)
- Nestle
- Novartis AG*
- Pernod Ricard
- PlayPass
- The Coca-Cola Company
- The Kraft Heinz Company
- Tire Rack
- Verizon
- Wells Fargo
- Whole Foods Market IP
- Yum! Brands
Many industry analysts as well as Twitter users have criticised Elon Musk’s recent decisions to reinstate banned accounts (including that of former President Donald Trump), the new account suspension policy and $8 monthly fee for a verified Twitter account that will enable extremists and scammers to purchase a blue check. While Musk has assured the manual screening of every account looking for a verified status on a paid basis, experts are still sceptical about the process.
Advertising is a major source of revenue for social media companies like Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok, Twitter etc. It is worth noting that social channels accounted for a staggering 61% of all US digital ad spending in Q3 2022.
