Twitter has suffered a “massive drop in revenue” due to advertisers pausing spending on the social media platform, Elon Musk, the brand new owner of the corporate, said Friday without providing numbers.
In a tweet, the Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX CEO forged blame on “activist groups pressuring advertisers.” He said Twitter hasn’t modified its content moderation strategy, and added the corporate has done “all the things we could to appease the activists.”
Musk didn’t specify how much revenue the corporate has lost from the pullback, or how he was in a position to attribute that loss to pressure from activist groups.
Musk reiterated his views Friday in an interview on the Baron Investment Conference.
“We have made no change in our operations in any respect,” Musk said on the event. “And we have done our very best to appease them and nothing is working. So that is a serious concern. And I believe that is frankly an attack on the First Amendment.”
Twitter has fired or laid off roughly 50% of its employees since he took over on Oct. 28.
In recent days, various corporations said they might temporarily pause their promoting spending on Twitter to see how things would change there under Musk’s ownership. Tesla competitors General Motors and Audi, and food titan General Mills are amongst the businesses which have paused Twitter spending.
United Airlines suspended its promoting on Twitter earlier this week, a spokesperson for the carrier said on Friday. The airline continues to be posting on the platform. It gave the impression to be the primary U.S. passenger airline to say it suspended promoting on Twitter. Airlines individually provide customer support on Twitter, which United can be not suspending, the spokesperson said, declining to supply further detail on the choice.
Ad giant IPG advised clients to temporarily pause their Twitter media plans, though it’s unclear how many purchasers are taking IPG agencies’ advice.
Twitter informed employees Thursday evening that it might begin shedding staff members, in line with communications obtained by CNBC. Twitter’s content moderation team is anticipated to be amongst those job cuts, Reuters reported, citing tweets by employees.
Musk in a tweet Friday, addressed the layoffs, saying: “Regarding Twitter’s reduction in force, unfortunately there isn’t a selection when the corporate is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% greater than legally required.”
CNBC has not confirmed this with former Twitter employees.
CNBC has also learned that deep cuts were made to Twitter’s global marketing team which handles, amongst other things, reporting and metrics around ad performance, sales performance and spam.
Earlier this week Musk, who now calls himself “Chief Twit,” met with a gaggle of leaders of civil society organizations to handle concerns about hate speech and election-related misinformation on the platform.
Since Musk took the helm, online trolls and bigots raided Twitter, and hate speech has surged on the platform. Musk also tweeted out, then deleted, an unfounded and anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory a few home invasion and assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
A few of the organizations represented within the hourlong Zoom call on Tuesday have now co-signed an open letter to top Twitter advertisers urging them to suspend their ad spending if Musk fails to implement the corporate’s safety standards and community guidelines.
Despite Musk’s claims of a recent revenue slump, Twitter’s ad spending had been on the decline before his takeover of the corporate was complete, and before civil society organizations began pressuring brands, in line with ad analytics platform MediaRadar.
Advertisers on Twitter increased between April and May, across the time that Musk’s plan to take Twitter private was announced, before it began to say no, in line with data from MediaRadar. But the common variety of advertisers on the platform fell from 3,900 in May to 2,300 in August. It had 2,900 advertisers in September.
