A recent global survey reveals that over a quarter of advertisers intend to reduce spending on Elon Musk’s social media platform, X, due to growing concerns over content and trust in the information being shared.
The survey, conducted by data firm Kantar, interviewed 18,000 consumers and 1,000 senior marketers globally. Findings indicate that 26% of marketers plan to reduce their ad spend on X in 2025, citing concerns about brand safety.
“Marketers are brand custodians and need to trust the platforms they use,” said Gonca Bubani, a director at Kantar. “X has changed so much in recent years and can be unpredictable from one day to the next. It is difficult to feel confident about your brand safety in that environment.”
Kantar’s annual survey shows that the trend of advertisers leaving X is accelerating, with 14% of marketers cutting back their budgets this year alone.
Since Musk’s acquisition of X, formerly Twitter, for $44 billion in October 2022, the platform has seen a significant decline in advertising revenue.
Musk’s controversial actions, combined with unpredictable platform changes, have led advertisers to rethink their presence on X. This has been exacerbated by Musk’s erratic behavior on the platform, where he boasts nearly 200 million followers.
Data from eMarketer highlights the platform’s commercial decline, noting that X’s global revenues peaked in 2021 at $4.46 billion but dropped to $4.14 billion in 2022. Revenue is expected to fall to $1.9 billion by the end of 2024. UK revenues have similarly plummeted, from $366 million in 2021 to a projected $160 million this year.
Advertisers have steadily shifted away from X, and Bubani notes that the recent surge in this trend makes a reversal unlikely. This is compounded by a series of controversies surrounding Musk, including posts related to antisemitism and political unrest, as well as a recent ban on X in Brazil for failing to comply with court orders to remove disinformation.
The survey further reveals that marketers’ trust in ads on X has dwindled, dropping from 22% in 2022 to just 12% this year, with only 4% believing that X provides adequate brand safety.
In response to this, Musk took a confrontational stance, tweeting“ We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war,” Musk tweeted at the time.
Last year, Musk delivered a profanity-laced message to advertisers pulling money from X during an on-stage interview at an event in New York.
“Advertisers know that X now offers stronger brand safety, performance and analytics capabilities than ever before, while seeing all-time-high levels of usage,” an X spokesperson said. “Our brand safety rate is on average 99% as validated by Double Verify and Integral Ads Science, which is reflected by the fact that the majority of advertisers are increasing their investment in X, as shown by Kantar’s data.”