There is skepticism among media buyers that X will be able to rebound from the latest advertiser exodus. Two media buyers previously told Ad Age that they no longer have any clients actively advertising on X.
“I don’t see any of our advertisers coming back onto X,” one media buyers said. The buyer had said any advertiser that spends on social media understands the risk of being served next to controversial content. The difference for X is that it fails advertisers’ expectation that “content is monitored and eliminated when it breaks rules of the platform, [and] also that the content is from users not condoned, endorsed or boosted by the platform."
Becoming less reliant on ad revenue
The Sensor Tower report found consumers have spent more than $60 million on subscriptions to X Premium (formerly Twitter Blue) since December 2022, but it will still be hard for the platform to move forward without relying on ad revenue.
“To put this into perspective, in the companyʼs last public filing (2Q22), it generated nearly $2.2 billion in advertising revenue over the first six months of that year (2022),” the report said. “While premium subscriptions present a good opportunity to further monetize the most engaged users of the platform, this alternative revenue source is merely a drop in the bucket compared to what the company was previously generating from advertising, further reinforcing Xʼs reliance on advertiser dollars to keep the lights on.”
User growth has also slowed on the platform. Monthly active users worldwide have declined an average of 8% year over year from January 2023 to October 2023, according to the report.
X is also smaller than its rivals, adding more challenges.
The report found that X had the least global mobile app monthly active users compared to its peers, sitting at less than 370 million in October 2023 compared to 2.8 billion for YouTube; 2.2 billion for Meta's Facebook; 1.5 billion for Meta's Instagram; 1.1 billion for TikTok; and 641 million for Snapchat.
In terms of user engagement, the report found that X is only ahead of Snapchat. Mobile app users spent an average of 30 minutes a day on X in October 2023, compared to TikTok’s 96 minutes a day, Instagram’s 60 minutes a day, Facebook’s 55 minutes a day and Snapchat’s 20 minutes a day.
Contributing: Garett Sloane and Parker Herren