In any case: I wonder, do they know? Do they really know that advertisers are deserting Twitter? I suspect they know no more than I do, sitting here in Himg Kong. Unless they have an inside source, but even then the animus inside Twitter towards Elon is such you count really count on its being true.
I’ve had a look at my own Twitter feed. I follow 187 people, a variety of liberal and conservative. I’ve noticed no particular change in advertisers. If anything I see more. And there seems to be a new class of advertiser on Twitter: individual tweets that are “promoted” presumably at a fee to Twitterl. BTW I notice no increase in nasty tweets, nor a “cesspool of hate” as Musk-haters are claiming. (I never tweet myself, I just go there to see what’s happening).
I can totally imagine why there might be more advertisers. Back in the oughts my company was a major advertiser online (mostly Yahoo at the time). If we saw that we could get some cheap advertising when others were scared to — as is the claim at the moment for Twitter— we’d rush in for it! It would make no difference that there might be nasty tweets nearby. No sane advertiser imagines that people connect their product, a Dior dress, say, with a distasteful tweet above or below it. That’s just silly. As Dior, Bank of America … etc, clearly know.
Here’s a list of advertisers on my Twitter feed as of just now:
Advertisers that appeared on my feed before Musk and are still there:
Dior
Bank of America
Interactive Brokers
Financial Times
Bloomberg
UBS
Economist
Standard Chartered
BBC Storyworks
Advertisers since Musk:
Voluum
Uni Helsinki
Bulls n Bears
Blaze
Sake Post
Aramco
Metawin
Turnitin
World Bank
Melia Hotels
NBA (One of America's most woke organisations)
Digital Currency
Linch Network
Near Protocol
CASETiFY
Barclay Bank
Art Basel
Financial Service Development Council
Oxford Journals
UBtech Robotics
That’s a lot of new accounts! Of course, YMMV. Everyone’s feed is different and so the advertisers algorithmically “promoted” to you will be different from the ones promoted to me.
In any case, from the above it sure doesn’t seem -- does it? -- that Twitter advertisers are “falling off a cliff”.
By the way (1): it turns out Twitter doesn’t need 2,500 sales people. Most advertisers can sign up online to have their ad “promoted”. They don’t need to speak to an actual, live, person.
By the way (2): at least 5,000 Twitter staff have been sacked or resigned. Average salary just under $100kpa. That’s $500,000,000 savings per year. Think on that. Half a billion, per year, savings.
By the way (3): World Bank, Aramco and NBA aside, I don’t recognise most of the new advertisers. But isn’t that the point of advertising? To get known?
ADDED (re the s/shot at top): Jeep, Mars, Merck, etc, are storied brands all, most decades old, some over a century (Merck 354!), nonetheless captured, apparently, by woke-ism, either their staff or their customers, to stop advertising on Twitter. Shame on them. I presume their accounts are larger than most of the new companies advertising, above. But they will be back, I wager. Especially now they know Twitter has record high engagement. And is not a “right wing cesspit”.
