Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover gives advertisers an easy out from the platform

In a year of difficult decisions for marketers, whether to stick or twist from Twitter might be the easiest yet.

Continue to advertise somewhere where the thin line between hate speech and free speech seems to be getting thinner or take what little dollars that were being spent there elsewhere? That’s the choice marketers have been grappling with since controversial billionaire Elon Musk took control of Twitter. Come to think of it, it’s not so much a choice as it is a given.

“Most of the marketers I’ve spoken to have pulled their dollars over the last week,” said a senior ad executive who has met with advertisers about the issue in recent days. “Pressing pause on those dollars is, quite frankly, the most logical thing that any sort of senior marketer who cares about consumer media safety and their brand reputation could do.”

Which is to say this Twitter advertiser boycott is about as low stakes as it can get in marketing right now.

“Most clients I speak to are waiting to see what happens and which direction things go in,” said an agency exec on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to Digiday. “Advertisers don’t know how it’s going to play out so [they] are taking the safety-first option. They will sit on the side-lines until the direction of travel becomes clearer. That is our advice if needed, but clients are already in that position.”

They’re in that position because they could see the Twitter takeover was going to be rocky from a mile off — ever since Musk first floated the idea of takeover, in April. And they were right. There’s been no shortage of corporate chicanery, memes, broken promises, empty threats, whistleblowing, legal scraps and more in this takeover drama. Marketers have watched this all play out from the sidelines, going from being distracted by the possibility of the acquisition, disengaged once it happened to officially displaced now it’s netted out.

Its financials have reflected that instability as well. In its Q2 earnings report, Twitter recorded a total revenue of $1.18 billion or a decrease of 1% year-over-year. At the time, advertising made up $1.08 billion of that, a slight increase year over year. The “uncertainty” of Musk’s pending acquisition at that time was recorded as a reason for its financial situation.

“We have had individual conversations with clients — as they’re looking ahead to the political season, there’s a lot of turmoil,” said Melissa Wisehart, global head of media at Media.Monks. “And just in general, we see a lot of clients being pretty conservative when it comes to brand safety. So we have had clients pause, we have had clients in a bit of a wait and see mode as well.”

Marketers are understandably perplexed. The takeover has created significant uncertainty.

Can Musk manage three ventures? How will the content moderation council work to make Twitter a safe space? What direction will the business go with the erratic Musk at the helm? Will a …read more

Source:: Digiday