Advertisers have been fleeing Twitter in droves as the chaos of Elon Musk’s leadership unfolds. Half the platform's top 100 advertisers have now departed, according to Media Matters. Meanwhile, the up-and-coming Twitter rival Mastodon has seen its number of active users swell from 300,000 to 2.6 million in the month since Musk's takeover. But advertisers who want to follow migrating users and their dollars will find a tiny snag in their plans: Mastodon doesn't support advertising. At all. The service promotes itself as "social networking that's not for sale."
Unlike on Twitter or Facebook, no one can pay to boost their Mastodon posts, and there is no algorithmic analysis of users’ interests that can assist brands with ad targeting. A company can set up a profile there, but its posts won’t hit the eyeballs of anyone who isn’t actively following its account.
