Elon Musk’s Twitter is cutting out advertising, he’s reacting with desperate measures

Declining “X” revenue
Musk’s Twitter stops advertising – he responds with a desperate measure

All of a sudden, links to news sites on the short message service X are hardly recognizable as such anymore. One reason for this is likely to be the falling advertising revenue.

It’s a change that immediately catches your eye. If you scroll through the feed on There is a conscious strategy behind this on the part of the owner Elon Musk. And his ever-increasing advertising problem.

It’s no secret that the change is directly due to Musk. “This comes directly from me,” he explained in August when there were first rumors about the controversial innovation. Musk claimed at the time that it was about “aesthetics”. In fact, it’s probably mainly about his plans to convert the platform itself into a medium. And so be able to respond to the constraints of the advertising slump.

X makes messages disappear

For most users, the new view, which is currently only being introduced in the iPhone app from . On the one hand, because it is hardly obvious that there is a link behind the image. On the other hand, because you simply don’t know what will actually happen next. Writing the headline in the normal text field doesn’t help much either: the post, which was actually intended as an invitation to open the message itself, suddenly looks like a self-contained post with a picture.

This corresponds exactly to how Musk would actually like to position He revealed that he already primarily consumes news there. “I hardly follow the traditional media anymore.” In his opinion, Twitter is more direct, faster and more reliable. He did not respond to allegations that the number of false reports would increase dramatically as a result.

Elon Musk’s advertising problem

The fact that X should now become the news site itself instead of offering the classic media a platform is not only an idealistic idea – but also a financial necessity for Musk. As has just been announced, since the takeover last October, X has lost an average of 55 percent of its advertising customers compared to the same month last year. This is reported by “Reuters”. In December, the slump was particularly sharp at 78 percent compared to the previous year, but then eased somewhat over the course of the spring. Since May, however, the deficit has increased significantly again; in July, advertising revenue was around 65 percent lower than in the previous year.

In order to drive revenue back up, one thing in particular is likely to be useful: a higher level of user engagement with the content offered by X. When videos and articles are consumed directly on the short message service, Musk kills two birds with one stone. On the one hand, users do not leave their own platform every time they click a link and are shown advertising from the pages they have visited instead of from Twitter. On the other hand, the time spent in the app continues to increase – and with it the advertising opportunities.

Long-planned changes

Musk has been laying the foundations for the strategy for months. Since the takeover, the 280 character limit for subscribers to the premium offer “Blue” has not only been dropped. Musk actively encouraged publishing long articles directly on the site. With exclusive deals like those with the controversial US presenter Tucker Carlson, he brought sought-after video content directly to Given the relatively low income, media companies are unlikely to suddenly start publishing their research only via Twitter.

It remains to be seen whether the strategy will pay off. The fact that advertising revenue at As, as he says, a “radical advocate of freedom of expression,” the new owner had also brought back numerous voices that had been blocked because of attacks against others or the spread of false news. The drop in advertising bookings can also be attributed to customers becoming more cautious about not wanting to be associated with this content.

The X managing director Linda Yaccarino was optimistic last week. Almost 90 percent of the advertisers who dropped out are now back on board, she explained in an interview. And she dared to make a sporting prediction: X should become profitable as early as next year.

Sources: Reuters, CNBC, Market Watch, Vox