X advertising guide—everything marketers need to know about the latest boycott

Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) is embroiled in another standoff with a contingent of top advertisers, including Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal and IBM, which halted ads on the service, and there are further signs of deterioration in X’s ad prospects. Here’s everything brands need to know about the latest controversy and what’s next. X did not return a request for comment for this story. Why are advertisers pulling out of X? The latest controversy for X is believed to have begun after Oct. 7 with the Hamas attack on Israel, according to Sheryl Daija, CEO of Bridge, a trade organization that advocates for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. X was a “free-for-all” of misinformation, Daija said. Tensions further escalated last week when Musk endorsed a post on X promoting an antisemitic conspiracy theory. On Tuesday, 30 Democratic lawmakers from the U.S. House of Representatives shared those concerns, writing a letter to X CEO Linda Yaccarino and Musk saying the platform is “profiting from the spread of Hamas’ propaganda.” The letter claimed that X was allowing content that goes against its own policies. The policies of a platform, and how well the platform abides by its internal rules, are one of the ways advertisers evaluate brand safety guardrails, Daija said. Musk then said in a post on Tuesday that “X Corp will be donating all revenue from advertising & subscriptions associated with the war in Gaza to hospitals in Israel and the Red Cross/Crescent in Gaza.” Read more here: Reactions to X’s ad boycott Which brands are pausing advertising on X? Apple, Disney, NBCUniversal, IBM, Paramount, Sony, Lionsgate and Warner Bros. Discovery have since publicly said they have stopped spending on X. And today, Paris Hilton’s 11:11 Media studio announced it also was pausing advertising, according to CNN. Hilton has publicly embraced the platform and Yaccarino. Last month, Yaccarino, in an X post, called Hilton the “queen of pop culture” with the hashtag “sliving,” a reference to Hilton’s catchphrase combining “slaying and living.” Yaccarino was promoting a partnership that now seems soured. Sales intelligence company MediaRadar on Tuesday reported that some major brands, including Coca-Cola and AT&T, had already reduced spending on X by more than 90%, since before the latest troubles. The report noted that these brands reduced spending on X by more than 90% so far this year, compared to the first 10 months of last year. Coca-Cola and AT&T did not immediately return a request for comment on its ad spending status on X. MediaRadar monitors ad data through a panel of more than 2 million X users in the U.S., so it does not have visibility into the whole platform, but its figures jibe with X’s ad troubles reported elsewhere. Last month, Standard Media Index, a group that tracks ad agencies and their ad spend, said X’s ad revenue declined 54% year over year in August. This comes following a sharp decline in ad revenue late last year in the wake of Musk’s takeover of Twitter, with SMI reporting a 46% decline in ad revenue in November 2022. Some of the brands that Yaccarino had once publicly welcomed back to the service are now among those that have paused spend. In August, Yaccarino was touting how X had been a successful marketing channel for this summer’s biggest blockbusters, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” But Warner Bros. Discovery and Universal Pictures, the studios affiliated with those films, are part of the companies that said they were pausing spending on X. “Look at all the companies that pulled out, and I don’t think that’s all of them,” Bridge’s Daija said. “I don’t think every company that is stopping is making major statements that they’re not advertising with X.” But X support hasn’t completely collapsed. The NFL will continue to work with X, “because our fans are clearly there,” said Brian Rolapp, NFL’s chief of business and media, speaking to CNBC on Tuesday. The NFL, and other sports leagues, are key content partners with X, and they are sources of ad inventory on the site—brands buy video ads that run inside media partners’ posts on X. X also is a staple for real-time sports marketing, especially during the Super Bowl. It’s worth noting the NFL also is a member of X’s Client Council, an advisory board of top brands that Yaccarino reconstituted after becoming CEO. X said Oracle was the one advertiser to not halt spending out of the brands that were mentioned in Media Matters’ report. Oracle was not immediately available for comment. How has Elon Musk and X leadership responded? Since Musk bought the company, he has tangled with various organizations who he has claimed have been “pressuring advertisers,” and he blamed them for pushing brands to leave the platform. This week, X sued one group, Media Matters, which has released multiple reports about X showing potentially harmful content, including hashtags affiliated with white nationalists and antisemitic posts, next to ads. Yaccarino has been urging advertisers to hold the line with X. “On one side, there’s a vocal minority trying to use deceptive attacks to undermine our work,” Yaccarino wrote in a note to X employees and shared publicly on Monday. “But on the other side, there are vocal supporters and courageous partners who believe in X and the meaningful work you are all doing.” Related: What advertisers need to know about Yaccarino Yaccarino and Musk have both insisted that X is safer than it was under previous ownership and Yaccarino has claimed 99.9% of the content is “healthy.” What is X’s history with brand safety? For the ad industry, the turmoil at X is not new. There was a brand revolt last November, right after Musk took over the company. There were fears that he would open the platform to more extreme speech. Brands also witnessed ham-handed rollouts of new products, such as paid check marks, which allow any paying user to be verified, leading to a spate of seemingly authentic accounts impersonating brands. Since then, some advertisers and ad agencies have slowly resumed marketing on X. For all its flaws, X was still viewed as a powerful communication platform where consumers are talking about brands. To be sure, X is not the only social platform that has faced brand safety issues—Meta, Google, TikTok and other platforms have also been scrutinized over how they moderate certain forms of speech and how their algorithms could amplify harmful content. Last week, for example, TikTok, owned by Chinese-based ByteDance, trended with videos empathizing with Osama Bin Laden. TikTok started removing videos referencing Bin Laden content for violating “rules on supporting any form of terrorism,” Reuters reported. Marketers say the difference between X and other platforms, however, is that those services appear to be working with ad stakeholders to show they respond to crises and improve safety measures. “[TikTok] could have acted faster, of course, but they did act,” said Daija, the CEO of Bridge, “and their intentions seem to be in the right place. All the platforms need to be concerned about this.” How is brand safety measured on X? In September, marking her first 100 days as X’s CEO, Yaccarino issued an update on progress, claiming that “hate speech impressions” were down 30% year over year. On Tuesday, however, Media Rating Council said that it halted work that could have helped clarify whether X’s brand safety mechanisms work. MRC audits how well a platform abides by its advertising policies as they relate to the moderation of the service. X had been working to set up this audit for years, since its previous ownership, but the audit was scrapped. “X completed a pre-evaluation of brand safety with MRC, but then due to business and operational circumstances, was not engaged with the audit process,” a representative of MRC said in an email statement, “and per leadership could not engage for months, so we removed them from in-process designation.” Digiday had first reported on the status change. MRC would have been able to tell if X’s brand safety protections operated according to industry standards based on terms set by the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. X still has deals with third-party measurement firms DoubleVerify and Integral Ad Science to monitor some surfaces of the site, checking for ads in harmful settings. In its lawsuit against Media Matters this week, X downplayed the significance of ads appearing near incendiary content, claiming it was a fraction of ads served—“0.0000009090909%” of ad impressions. On Monday, Yaccarino posted on X that “only 2 users saw Apple’s ad next to the content, at least one of which was Media Matters.” “That’s not the issue … The owner of your platform is retweeting and endorsing antisemitic posts,” said Lou Paskalis, the CEO of marketing consulting firm AJL Advisory who worked closely with X when it was still Twitter, in reply to Yaccarino’s post. Check out the latest Ad Age events and award programs

X advertising guide—everything marketers need to know about the latest boycott

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