Twitter's Ad Sales Plunge 59%

wing2000 said:

"Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times. The company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent, the document said."

Twitter’s ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be spooked by a rise in hate speech and inappropriate contentography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the people said. The company has forecast that its U.S. ad revenue this month will be down at least 56 percent each week compared with a year ago, according to one internal document.

Twitter's new CEO, Linda Yaccarino, started her first day on the job today.

Twitter’s U.S. Ad Sales Plunge 59% as Woes Continue (Published 2023)

In internal forecasts, the company projected that ad sales would keep declining, handing a tough challenge to its new chief executive.

www.nytimes.com

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At that rate Elon will have it paid off in/at no time!

I'm vaguely recalling something about go woke, go broke?

It looks like they're on pace to be back to their 2019 levels.

Given that Elon took it over in 2022, it looks like the downward trajectory began before then.


While corporate backlash likely explains some of it (IE: XYZCorp decides they want to signal to the left that they're super progressive, so they stop buying ads on Twitter because Elon was falsely made out to be some sort of alt-right figure and opposing Elon apparently gets you some sort of "progressive street cred")...

I think another aspect that could be impacting it is the same thing that impacted Meta (triggering massive layoffs in order to compensate)...which is those companies grew really big really fast during a time when everyone was stuck in their house starting in 2020 because of Covid, and when things finally started opening up for people, that meant less screen time in general when people got back to normal life.

Where Meta made a smarter move, is that all of their eggs weren't in one basket (They own other popular apps/brands besides Facebook that are good ad draws and that have a lot of users, like WhatsApp & Instagram). Twitter doesn't have much besides their primary short-form social media app...you look at the other brands under the twitter umbrella, it's largely a bunch of stuff nobody's ever heard of.

Having a popular chat app and a popular pic sharing app is a good business profile for when things start opening up and people start getting out of their house again...for every one person that's no longer locked away in their house on facebook, there's another getting back to traveling and posting on Instagram.

Twitter didn't have that lever to pull.


Two notable companies that yanked their ads from Twitter upon Elon's takeover was Coca-cola and Pfizer. While some on the progressive side called it a "win"...I don't know that it's necessarily something to celebrate. The fact that 2 of the world's largest companies (that happen to have monopolistic practices, historically) have the ability to "crush" other entities in the name of pandering to whatever group they want to win the favor of isn't something I'd call a great model.

ThatRobGuy said:

Given that Elon took it over in 2022, it looks like the downward trajectory began before then.

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The drama and the potential lawsuit began in early 2022. It seems plausible that the drama alone was enough to start the downward trajectory.

Tinker Grey said:

The drama and the potential lawsuit began in early 2022. It seems plausible that the drama alone was enough to start the downward trajectory.

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Jack Dorsey himself acknowledged that the company was already having issues prior...


co-founder Jack Dorsey is apologizing for the situation that led to mass layoffs and said he is to blame for growing the company “too quickly.”


Jack Dorsey even had this to say:


An odd statement, but it would seem that he recognized there were some problems happening, and at least at one point, didn't see Elon as a "bad thing"


To be clear, I'm not denying that "pander capitalism" didn't play a part in that in the form of extraneous brands pulling ads to virtue signal to those who wanted free speech to be contained within a ToS that exclusively conformed to a certain worldview. But I think it'd be shortsighted to assume that had Elon not taken it over, that Twitter would somehow be thriving today.

I very rarely visit Twitter directly. My perspective is that it's just something news articles and shows keep quoting.

I'll never understand why Must paid $44 billion for it. It seems like child's play in today's world to create a website where people can post messages.

the Vital One said:

I very rarely visit Twitter directly. My perspective is that it's just something news articles and shows keep quoting.

I'll never understand why Must paid $44 billion for it. It seems like child's play in today's world to create a website where people can post messages.

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Say you own Tesla stock.
Say you see Elon make this “move”.
“Arbitrary and capricious” is exciting and all but will you maybe move some of your capital elsewhere?