What advertisers should do about Elon Musk's Twitter takeover

On Oct. 27, Elon Musk declared in an open letter to advertisers—via tweet, of course—that “Twitter obviously cannot become a free-for-all hellscape, where anything can be said with no consequences…. Fundamentally, Twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world that strengthens your brand and grows your enterprise.”

A few weeks into Musk’s tenure as owner and CEO, however, it would be difficult to describe Twitter as anything but a free-for-all hellscape. After laying off half of the company’s 7,500 employees and decapitating leadership—including execs with the closest relationships with advertisers—Musk sowed chaos and confusion with his decision to overhaul Twitter’s verification system, driving away many high-profile blue-check celebrities and users and causing already-skittish brands and agencies to pause their advertising.

“With the advent of the new blue check for purchase system, Twitter was flooded with fake brands with blue checks,” said Dave Gregg, staff creative producer at Community Films. "I saw a 'Pepsi' account saying Coke was better. A 'Tesla' one saying they were donating thousands of vehicles to Ukraine because the cars explode. I know the platform doesn't have the consumer reach of TikTok or even Facebook and Instagram, but I can't imagine brand teams were happy with this.”

Thought leaders from the Amp community share their best advice to advertisers, as well as their two cents on what Twitter will look like in the coming months.

The guardrails are off

One of the casualties of the mass firing ordered by Musk at Twitter on Oct. 28 was, in part, the company’s moderation team.

“Elon Musk’s wrecking ball is in full effect, reshaping the platform in his vision, while going on offense with accusations that brands are leaving Twitter due to the unfair influence of social activism,” said Will Phipps, senior VP of media at Allen & Gerritsen. “But step away from the hyperbole, and the fear is real: The checks and balances of moderation seem to have been intentionally weakened. While free speech is cited, this is a ruse: If unrestricted opinions and ‘facts’ have no moderation or verification, as a society, we then tacitly support the potential for all forms of hate.”

In addition to the layoffs, Twitter also lost its top privacy and security officials last week, including Chief Information Security Officer Lea Kissner, Chief Privacy Officer Damien Kieran and Chief Compliance Officer Marianne Fogarty, bringing further uncertainty to the security of the platform.

Beyond the question of ethics and the impact to its user base of 238 million, the hit to Twitter’s moderation capability also carries serious implications for brands and advertisers.

“What seems to be lost in this debate is that regardless of a company's values or views, they have a financial incentive to reduce risk and protect their brand,” said Adrian Owen Jones, chief growth officer at ThreeSixtyEight. “News that Twitter has gutted their content moderation team means that your company's name can now appear in the feed next to unsavory content without recourse. The volatile nature of Twitter right now gives companies and media managers every incentive to pull back and monitor how the dust settles in the long term.”

And pulling back is exactly what some advertisers have been doing, including the likes of—somewhat predictably—automotive giants like GM, Audi and Stellantis (Jeep, Ram, Chrysler, Dodge), as well as major brands like Mondelēz, Pfizer, General Mills, United Airlines, Carlsberg, REI and The North Face.

After an Eli Lilly parody account tweeted, "We are excited to announce insulin is free now,” the Big Pharma brand's stock dropped the next day. "Did Twitter Blue tweet just cost Eli Lilly billions?" one tweet asked.

Read more: Twitter ad updates—tracking brand reactions to Musk

Some argue that the issue of brand safety—though particularly acute for Twitter right now—extends across the social media ecosystem.

“The more interesting point here is that this debate opens up a can of worms around brand safety,” said Douglas Brundage, founder and CEO at Kingsland. “Facebook is ‘a hotbed of child sexual abuse material’ [according to 2020 data from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children’s CyberTipline]. Instagram has suggested self-harm content to teenage girls, and did nothing after an internal report identified that the platform is detrimental to the mental health of our teens. Amazon still has that horrible antisemitic film up. YouTube is the primary way people get radicalized around the globe. TikTok offers a genuine national security threat. Where's our brand safety here? Perhaps it’s time that advertisers and agencies get together to create a code of ethics that we could all sign and enforce with clear red lines. We may need a marketing NATO.”

Others are waiting for the dust to settle before taking a stance.

"Remember when Reddit was the scariest place for a brand to be?” asked Allen & Gerritsen’s Phipps. “And now it’s become a legitimate place for many brands to co-exist with strong opinions. I think we should be cautiously open-minded with Twitter as well.

A radical reshaping

One thing everyone seems to agree on is that change is afoot at Twitter, most notably in the form of the pay-to-play verification badge.

“Having accounts pay for verification puts the credibility of the platform into question and creates an environment that fosters misinformation,” said Katie Price Ross, director of activation at Curiosity, noting that Twitter has already seen a rise in hate speech. “Many brands and agencies like Curiosity are in a ‘wait and see’ mode, holding back to understand how this all shakes out, especially in regards to brand safety.”

Some users have been repelled by the degree of change, migrating to alternative platforms like Mastodon, but that hasn’t been the case across the board.

“Others are signing up to Twitter for the first time, citing the new values that Musk has introduced to the company as their motivation,” said Sam Zises, CEO at [L]earned Media. “The landscape is certainly shifting, but as with YouTube’s ‘Adpocalypse’ of 2016, the immediate shocks to Twitter’s system will likely give way to a new normal. In the long term, users may see a flattening of their ecosystem. Former blue check mark celebrities may not have the same influence on the conversation, and crowd-sourced misinformation labels may give the ‘public square’ a more democratic air, in the strictest sense.”

While changes to the verification process may stand to increase accessibility, there are also costs—literal and otherwise—to consider with Musk’s changes.

“From its inception, Twitter has existed as a social network defined by global scale and the free flow of information between nodes in a flat, non-hierarchical way,” said Samantha Kretmar, supervisor of paid social at Just Global. “These nodes, or users, looked to Twitter for the real-time exchange of information related to news, politics and cultural happenings. 

"Users also enjoyed a degree of anonymity, as creating a profile didn’t require personally identifiable information," Kretmar added. "With Musk’s recent acquisition, these foundational elements of Twitter are changing at a rapid clip, putting users in a precarious position as we speak. His proposed verification fee will prioritize content based on if the author pays the fee, diminishing that flat, free-flowing aspect of the user experience. This same verification process also threatens to subdue a large degree of the anonymity that users could once enjoy.”

Additionally, Twitter Blue raises concerns about brand reach, with the prioritization of paid content potentially leading to an exodus of users who can no longer get from the platform what they’ve always sought in the past.

“If some voices pay to rank their posts higher in-feed with Twitter Blue, and users flee because they don’t want to hear those voices, then it becomes a reach problem for our brands, not a brand safety one,” said Danny Weisman, group media director at Noble People. “But fewer advertisers on the platform should mean cheaper short-term CPMs, and better deals for our clients who don’t have the big-budget-luxury of logging off the platform in protest.”

Weisman also pointed out the possible opportunity for advertisers on Twitter down the road, pointing to certain positive signs amid the chaos, including ads featuring more prominently on Twitter since Musk took over. “Twitter Blue’s updates could be an opportunity because those users will see around half the ads as a non-paying Twitter user,” he said. “Brands who take advantage of that reduced ad load will see a higher share of voice against a qualified, leaned in, and paying audience.”

Life after the Twitterpocalypse

With no crystal balls on hand, brands and advertisers are still grappling with what to do next with their ad dollars. More changes are almost guaranteed to come before things restabilize on Twitter, so the question of whether to continue business as usual, abandon ship or switch up the strategy is on the minds of many.

“We anticipate a turbulent period as users and brands figure out how they exist on the changing platform,” said Chris Jacks, director of growth strategy at HireInfluence. “Our advice to brands is to consider whether advertising through a period of drastic change makes sense. If advertising is working, there isn’t a reason to stop. However, we understand why brands might be hesitant to spend money on advertising while Twitter wrestles with its next iteration and changing identity.”

The question of whether Musk will put a paywall in place weighs heavy, too, carrying potentially decision-making impacts for advertisers.

“In the long term, we're predicting a big impact as Musk makes it clear that he wants to change how the company makes a profit,” said Curiosity’s Price Ross. “If Musk moves toward a paywall, we anticipate a mass exodus of sorts, with users putting more time into other platforms—which then puts more onus on other platforms to find ways to support similar user behavior through updated capabilities. At this point, all brands should have a diverse and healthy social media mix. No brand’s eggs should all be in one platform’s basket. We recommend continuing to diversify spend and pull back on Twitter in the coming months to understand what impact that has on overall results.”

While much is up in the air, Musk has made clear his intentions to make sweeping changes to his newly acquired asset, for better or worse.

“Elon’s vision is one of increased utility, truthfulness and entertainment,” said Nate Byrd, head of paid social at Empower. “The verification requirements are intended to make the platform more personalized, reduce hate speech and bring about new possibilities with payments integrations within the platform. The result of this transformation and its impact to end users is hard to quantify, but we can expect to see increases in video usage, investments in creators and more personalized experiences as you engage with the app, since these have all been identified as current weaknesses. The best advice to any brand currently advertising, or considering advertising, is to re-establish your comfort level and flexibility in the Twitter Ads ecosystem. While the content moderation policies haven’t changed, there has been a shift in sentiment and tone across the platform since the takeover. The newly ideated content moderation advisory council won’t be in place for months, so it will be up to internal tools and resources to monitor how conversation on the platform shifts in the coming weeks.”

Others have echoed the same sentiment of the temporary nature of the current chaos—growing pains as the company moves towards a more secure future.

“For brands currently advertising on the platform, my advice is to keep a close eye on the policies that Twitter has set forth about brand safety,” said [L]earned Media’s Zises. “Currently, the company is touting quite a few regulations that should reassure marketers. Twitter’s platform-wide protections commit to a tight leash on ad placement, search and keyword targeting restrictions. And its advertiser controls provide curatable options for campaign and audience placement. As long as Musk doesn’t radically upend these provisions, brand safety should be secure. Indeed, Musk has a vested interest in keeping Twitter friendly to brands—it’s unlikely he’ll want Tesla or SpaceX associated with junk on his own platform.”