Happy Nice Mall

“i hate advertisingElon Musk tweeted in 2019.

since you started chasing $44 billion acquisition From Twitter – and years before that – the richest man in the world made it clear that advertising is not a priority. He talked about making money from Twitter in other ways, for example charging some users to be on site. He also suggested that he wanted the service to relax. content moderation policiesIt helped prevent ads from appearing alongside hate speech and misinformation, marketers say.

But as Mr. Musk prepares to take over Twitter, he may quickly discover that Twitter needs Madison Avenue more than the opposite.

Ads make up roughly 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue. But long before Mr. Musk was acquired, many agency leaders were reluctant to advertise on the service. They filed a number of complaints, including the company’s nearly inability to target ads alongside competitors like Facebook, Google, and Amazon.

Now, multiple ad executives say they’re willing to move their money elsewhere, especially if Mr. Musk lifts the measures that allow Twitter to remove racist rants and conspiracy theories. An advertiser exit will weaken the company and underscore the difficulty of balancing Mr. Musk’s vision of viewing Twitter as a haven for freedom of expression with the business relationships that sustain it.

But Twitter’s co-founder, and at least some investors who took part in Mr. Musk’s proposal, rejected the need for advertising and insisted the company should get rid of it. Twitter’s status as a “public company committed to an advertising-only business model” added to its problems with bots, abuse, and censorship. said Ben HorowitzHe is the general partner of venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, which invested $400 million to make Twitter private.

The company’s co-founder, Jack Dorsey, agreed. “That’s true. It needs to be covered for a while,” said Mr. Dorsey. said in a tweet Reply to Mr Horowitz.

Advertisers said such a change would hurt Twitter. “At the end of the day, it’s not brands that need to worry about spending their budgets elsewhere – it’s Twitter that needs to be concerned,” said longtime advertising executive and CEO David Jones. Brandtech Group is a marketing technology company. “If you tell me TikTok is gone, it would be a disaster. But Twitter is gone? Whatever.”

Just after Mr. Musk reached an agreement to buy Twitter earlier last week, the company’s executives began reaching out to advertisers, according to regulatory filings and several people who received the messages. Managers emailed assurances that business would continue as usual and lines of communication would remain open. They said brand safety remains a “priority”.

Ad executives also noted that Twitter representatives said it would likely take months, if not more than a year, for any serious changes to take effect.

At Twitter’s annual NewFronts presentation to advertisers at Pier 17 in New York City on Wednesday night, company representatives highlighted the value of Twitter to marketers: the best way people can gather and discuss important cultural moments, like sporting events or the Met Gala, through more and more videos. good place postings. Hosts pledged to help brands reach fragmented audiences, and executives have repeatedly thanked advertisers and agencies for their trust and collaboration.

The pending acquisition of Mr. Musk and what it might mean for advertisers were not mentioned during the brief presentation.

“It’s been a quiet month on Twitter,” joked JP Maheu, Twitter’s vice president of global customer solutions.

Mr Musk’s representatives did not respond to a request for comment on his plans to advertise on Twitter. Twitter declined to comment.

Twitter is different from Facebook, where the millions of small and medium-sized advertisers make up the bulk of the company’s revenue and depend on its massive size and targeting capabilities to reach customers. Twitter’s clientele consists of large, mainstream companies that tend to be wary of their ads appearing alongside problematic content.

Twitter derives the vast majority of its ad revenue from brand awareness campaigns, which are much more difficult to evaluate effectiveness than ads that target users based on their interests or force a direct response, such as clicking on a website. For years, the company has tried to make its platform a better place for ads that drive measurable sales, and rebuilt its ad server in 2019 and 2020 to meet marketers’ demands. In March, Twitter began allowing advertisers in the United States to add shopping catalogs. best products on display for anyone visiting their profile.

Twitter’s reach is narrower than many of its competitors, with 229 million users seeing ads, compared to 830 million users on LinkedIn and 1.96 billion daily users on Facebook. Stifel analysts recently wrote to clients that Twitter “is still seen as a highly niche platform by many in the advertising industry.”

Last month, on Twitter, $1.2 billion revenue In the first three months of the year, it increased by 16 percent compared to the previous year, but still lagged behind the company’s forecasted growth rate. Despite being profitable in the quarter, the company has lost money in eight of the last 10 years.

Jason Dille, who oversees media planning, said Twitter accounts for about 10 percent of social media budgets at ad agency Chemistry, whose clients include healthcare companies and national restaurant chains.

“Even the likes of LinkedIn have eclipsed our ability to target consumers beyond what Twitter provides,” he said. “We’re going to go where results are, and along with many of our clients, we haven’t seen performance on Twitter from the advertising perspective we have on other platforms.”

But for Mr. Dille and others, Twitter’s stance on content controls was a bright spot. In 2019, banned all political ads. The company introduced warning labels about election misinformation, taken down lies about vaccines and after the Capitol revolt last year, permanently banned former President Donald J. Trump. Last month, the platform stopped in response to the war in Ukraine Strengthening the accounts of the Russian government and began blocking some tweets containing images of POWs. Days before the announcement of the deal with Mr. Musk, Twitter said it would do just that. ban ads that deny climate change.

“Twitter has done a better job of building trust with advertisers than many platforms – they’ve been more progressive, more responsive, and more humble about initiating ways to learn,” said Mark Read, CEO of WPP, one of the largest advertising companies. In the world.

Now, many advertisers say they’re worried the ten-year-old protective scaffolding could be dismantled, though they’ll wait to see what Mr. Musk does.

“We can safely say that if content moderation policies change and there is no way for us to protect the brand, we will definitely advise our clients to abandon their investment,” said Arun Kumar. chief data and technology officer at advertising giant IPG.

Several ad executives said they doubted Mr Musk would take his concerns into account because of his performance in the industry.

Musk, founder of successful electric car company Tesla and rocket company SpaceX, does little marketing for these businesses. He criticized the ads on Twitter as follows:manipulate public opinion” and discussed his refusal”paying famous people to give fake endorsements” while writing in deleted tweet About the recently introduced Twitter Blue $3 per month subscription serviceHe pressed for “no ads,” “the power of companies to dictate policy is greatly enhanced if Twitter depends on advertising money for its survival.”

“I don’t think he cares about the ad experience on Twitter because he didn’t care about the ad at all,” said Harry Kargman, CEO of mobile advertising company Cargo. “I don’t think it’s all about convincing advertisers to spend money on the platform beyond what is automated.”

Mr. Musk suggested that Twitter focus on subscriptions; others have suggested a pay-per-tweet model. But some ad executives hope Mr. Musk’s competitive spirit will inspire him to reset Twitter as a powerhouse marketing machine.

“There’s a fork in the road where Way A goes to an unfiltered place with the worst human behavior, and no brand wants to go near it,” Brandtech’s Mr. Jones said. “And Road B has one of the genius entrepreneurs of the worldIn a few years, people would look back and say, ‘Remember when everyone was worried about Musk coming back?’