In the weeks after Elon Musk acquired Twitter Inc., hundreds of advertisers paused spending on the platform, wary of the changes the mercurial billionaire might bring to the social media platform. Months later, many still haven’t returned, despite efforts by Twitter’s sales team to woo them back with steep discounts and new safety tools.
From September to October of last year, the top 10 advertisers on Twitter spent $71 million on ads, according to estimates from Pathmatics. In the past two months, that figure dropped to just $7.6 million, a decline of 89%, the research firm said. Twitter’s top ad customers historically have included marquee names like HBO, Amazon, IBM and Coca-Cola.
Despite a slight uptick in daily users since early 2022, Twitter’s revenue has fallen by 50% since October as a result of a “massive decline” in advertising, Musk said earlier this month. Major brands such as Mondelez International Inc., Coca-Cola Co., Merck & Co. Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. and AT&T Inc. still hadn’t resumed ad spending on the platform as of February, according to Pathmatics.
