Elon Musk's tumultuous tenure at Twitter has led to disagreements with top brands and marketers, resulting in a significant impact on the company's advertising division, which generates $5 billion annually, increasing pressure on the American billionaire. Several advertising agencies and marketers told the "Financial Times" that "all major brands they represent have temporarily halted spending on the social media platform, citing alarm over Musk's approach to content moderation and his decision to lay off many people from the sales team."
Meanwhile, "Musk sought to personally contact the CEOs of some brands that stopped advertising on Twitter to reprimand them," according to a senior industry figure. This move "prompted others to minimize their spending to the bare minimum required to avoid confrontation with the billionaire entrepreneur."
After several rounds of layoffs and resignations, Twitter's advertising team has shrunk significantly, to the point that "many agencies no longer have any point of contact with the company and have received little or no communication at all in recent weeks," according to four sources. Another source explained that "some brands were unable to get feedback on the performance of previous campaigns due to staff shortages at Twitter."
One senior executive at an advertising agency stated, "It's unique; nothing of this scale has ever happened before in terms of disruption and damage." Musk is under pressure to generate revenue from Twitter, as he faces annual interest payments of $1 billion after loading the company with $13 billion in debt to help finance his acquisition.
On October 27, the day he finalized his $44 billion deal to purchase Twitter, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX sought to reassure marketers that the platform would not become a "free-for-all," despite his plans to ease content moderation restrictions.
