Over 500 advertisers have paused their spending on Twitter since Elon Musk’s takeover last year, according to The Information.
The social media app’s daily revenue is also 40% lower than the same day last year (17 January), a report from tech newsletter Platformer found.
Since Musk’s takeover of the company last October, brands and agencies have fled the app in response to a flurry of controversy surrounding the app. When Musk introduced a verified ‘blue tick’ subscription service, brands including Nintendo, Valve and Apple were impersonated and their respective brand images were damaged as a result.
“For those brands who have complicated or more governed products – and who are feeling nervous – then potentially now is the time to retire the account, without deleting the handle of course,” Buddy Media director of organic social media, Laura Hartley, told Marketing Beat.
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The introduction of an impression count feature and the announcement that Twitter is set to reverse its restrictions on political advertising, also add to the sense of volatility as advertisers begin to lose trust in the app as a marketing platform.
RMK Marketing founder and lead social media marketing specialist, Rob Kearsey, told Marketing Beat that brands should pull out of Twitter “for the time being”, as he believes the platform is “not a brand space environment at the moment”.
“You only have to look at what happened to Nintendo, with a fake account posting a picture of the iconic Mario character sticking his middle finger up, to see that,” he said.
