With the OpenAI affair, we almost ended up forgetting the “setbacks” of Elon Musk. His message of acquiescence under an anti-Semitic post had been the last straw for many advertisers, starting with Apple and IBM who had decided to stop advertising on X.
In an internal memo published by The Hollywood ReporterLinda Yaccarino had both affirmed X’s fierce desire for freedom of expression while combating anti-Semitism and discrimination.
If the boss of Twitter wants to be optimistic and wanted to believe that things would return to order once the “misunderstandings were cleared up”, this affair comes at the worst time. The end-of-year holidays are a key period for advertising investments.
The New York Times, who managed to obtain internal documents, evokes a situation much more difficult than it seems for the social network. More than 100 companies have paused their advertising investments. Dozens of other companies have either significantly reduced their size or are considering it very seriously. The article cites Airbnb which canceled a campaign worth more than a million dollars or Uber which significantly scaled back, even though it planned to spend more than 800,000 dollars.
Twitter, which was already not in good financial shape, could lose big in the story. 11 million advertising budgets are already under threat. And if the situation remained as is, Twitter could then lose up to $75 million by the end of the year. X wanted to partially refute the information published by the NY Times, believing that it was an exercise aimed at estimating potential losses and that the figures in question were already obsolete.
Finally, in an attempt to calm people’s minds, Elon Musk announced that all advertising and subscription revenues associated with the Israel-Hamas war would be donated to hospitals in Israel and to the Red Cross for Gaza.