CES 2025—How X CEO’s ad pitch was rebuked, plus Read and Wren on Meta and brand safety

An awkward moment ensued at CES on Wednesday when X CEO Linda Yaccarino pitched advertisers to allocate ad budgets to her platform, only to be subverted minutes later, on the same stage, by billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban. “You don’t have to go to Pornhub, you can go to X and you can be 13 years old,” Cuban told Shelly Palmer, CEO of The Palmer Group, during an appearance at Palmer’s invite-only marketing event at The Wynn. Cuban was referring to the fact that the public and government have taken hard lines against online pornography, blocking Pornhub in some states. Meanwhile, X hosts potentially harmful material, with less pressure to reform. Cuban continued to rail on X’s environment, explaining how he sees antisemitism on the platform every day. “If you truly want free speech, is that what you want?” he said. Ad Age Tech Power List 2025 We’re looking for top digital innovators from agencies, brands, platforms, ad tech companies and tech startups Enter here Cuban’s comments come as marketers are still reeling from Meta’s announcement this week that it will no longer employ fact-checking moderation policies on its platforms. Instead, the company is opting for a “community notes” approach, similar to one Musk devised at X, in which users can add context to an existing post. Meta’s reversal is spooking advertisers, calling into question the future of brand safety on social media. Ad Age sat down separately at CES with two of advertising’s leading men—WPP CEO Mark Read and John Wren, chairman and CEO of Omnicom Group—to discuss the Meta move, X, President-elect Trump and how it all impacts brand safety. Below, more on X and Meta from CES. Read Ad Age’s 2025 predictions stories here ‘Healthier and more factual’ X’s loss of advertisers since Elon Musk took over the company (then Twitter) in 2022 is partly why Yaccarino was at CES. In addition to speaking at an official conference keynote on Tuesday, she joined Palmer on stage on Wednesday morning. During that brief session, Yaccarino urged advertisers in the room to embrace X’s philosophy, saying that brands should want to be in a conversation that is “healthier and more factual.” Yaccarino also lauded Meta for its move to community notes. X has a more formal presence at CES this year than last year, including an official booth at the Aria. Representatives from X also joined Stagwell and several of its clients for a dinner on Wednesday in Las Vegas, according to Mark Penn, chairman and CEO of Stagwell. The heightened engagement with brands follows X’s recent hiring of a head marketer, Angela Zepeda, to steer efforts promoting its business. Yaccarino was billed as the final speaker at Palmer’s event, so it is unclear if she knew that Cuban would appear directly after her (Cuban’s appearance was a surprise). By the time he railed into X, Yaccarino and her party had already left the packed conference room. While Yaccarino positioned community notes as a key attraction of X in her pitch to advertisers, Cuban threw cold water on the policy. Cuban claimed that Musk, with whom he has previously clashed, and on Wednesday deemed “the world’s biggest troll,” would set the rules for community notes. Cuban did not explicitly tell advertisers to stay off X, but his portrayal of the platform could not have made Yaccarino’s job any easier. Tracking the latest Omnicom-IPG merger news and analysis Mark Read and John Wren on Meta, X and Trump WPP’s Read and Omnicom’s Wren each said that the issue of brand safety on social media is still important for marketers, despite a growing number of signs that advertisers are being forced to forgo the concern. Meta’s reversal of its moderation policy, the most recent sign, shocked a number of WPP clients, Read said—they grew nervous about the future and are trying to understand what it could mean for their social media strategies. However, Read did not outright criticize the move, calling it “pragmatic” in the sense of currying favor with the incoming Trump administration. For Wren, one concern about Meta is that it may not be able to replicate the community notes system in countries beyond the U.S., such as those belonging to the EU, he said. The EU maintains stricter data laws than the U.S., which Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg explicitly called out in his announcement earlier this week. Zuckerberg’s move, as Read alluded, was widely viewed as a concession to President-elect Donald Trump, who has not shied away from openly criticizing the Meta CEO in the past. According to a media executive at CES speaking on background, brands were worried that Trump could take similar grievances against them, as well as their acquisitions and social stances. The media executive said that the same worry extends to Musk, who has recently cozied up with Trump. This could mushroom into pressure to satisfy Musk and feeling forced to spend more to advertise on X. Wren agreed that brands are feeling pressure from both men. “You have a very unique individual saying whatever is on his mind and companies are finding their way through it,” Wren said, referring to Musk. As long as brands are following their principles, they should not seek approval from either man, he said. Despite the specter of Musk, X has seen more advertisers return to its platform over the past six to nine months, according to Read. But the company “still has some ways to go” when it comes to convincing brands in order to see a return to 2022 numbers, Read said. On Wednesday night, Musk and Stagwell’s Penn had a live conversation on X. They discussed topics such as robotics, the future of Musk’s neurotechnology company, Neuralink, Meta’s move to eliminate third-party fact checking on its platforms and more. The executives did not make any formal announcements.

CES 2025—How X CEO’s ad pitch was rebuked, plus Read and Wren on Meta and brand safety

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