Major companies are allocating small amounts of their advertising budgets to X (formerly Twitter) to curry favor with Elon Musk.
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Many advertisers have stopped placing ads on X (formerly Twitter) due to hate speech on the platform and backlash against Elon Musk's comments, and X has filed lawsuits against such companies. To avoid being caught up in these conflicts, some companies are spending small amounts of money on X, the financial newspaper Financial Times reported.
Brands spend nominal sums on X ads to keep Elon Musk happy
https://www.ft.com/content/8d3e4dba-1246-482d-9aaa-d970d2cb0a94
According to the Financial Times, multiple marketing executives said that the attention Musk has received for his role in the Trump administration has forced companies to make small advertising investments in X.
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Lou Paskalis, CEO of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory and former media executive at Bank of America, told the Financial Times: 'The idea is that you just have to spend enough on X to get off the naughty list. There's still a risk of brand damage in doing business with X, but there's a much bigger risk that Musk's comments will cause the stock price to crash.'
In March 2025, X was acquired by Musk's AI company xAI, and Musk announced that the two companies would combine their data, AI models, and human resources. Companies are increasingly concerned about the risk of incurring Musk's displeasure due to the economic impact of this integration of management resources and the growing political influence of Musk's rapprochement with the Trump administration.
Elon Musk announces that xAI has acquired X - GIGAZINE
Musk and X CEO Linda Yaccarino also aim to restore X's advertising revenue to 2022 levels, according to two people familiar with the matter.
The reason Musk and others chose 2022 ad revenue as the benchmark is because they believe that this is the minimum they can achieve even if a company boycotts X for political bias, according to a person familiar with the matter.
When the company was acquired by Musk and called Twitter, its global sales were $4.1 billion in 2022, but X's sales are expected to fall sharply to $1.9 billion in 2024. Still, with some companies resuming advertising, sales are expected to recover to $2.3 billion in 2025.
For example, the three major advertising companies known as the Big Four in the advertising industry - WPP, Omnicom, Publicis and Interpublic Group - were all cautious about placing ads with X when it took over from Twitter. However, at the time of writing, they have either agreed to, or are in discussions with X, to set annual spending targets in 'upfront contracts' that guarantee advertisers will purchase ad space in advance.
'X is coming back to life and becoming an increasingly vibrant platform,' said Mark Penn, CEO of New York-based ad agency Stagwell. 'Political boycotts of X are fading as companies realize that taking sides is dangerous.'
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in Web Service, Posted by log1l_ks