As Elon Musk struggled to rebuild X's ability to generate revenue, the site suffered a mass advertiser exodus late last year, and at least some of those departures were evidently due to pro-nazi content. A few months later, Musk told advertisers "go fuck yourself."
And this was all right before Musk shared that the former Twitter's revenue was already down by 60 percent from before his acquisition.
It looks like 2025 isn't going to be any better for X. A new report from UK market research firm Kantar found that 26 percent of marketers are planning to reduce their ad spend on Musk's platform next year.
According to Kantar's research, this was the "biggest recorded pullback" from any of the major global advertising platforms.
“Advertisers have been moving their marketing spend away from X for several years," said Kantary's Global Thought Leadership Director Gonca Bubani. "The stark acceleration of this trend in the past 12 months means a turnaround currently seems unlikely."
Kantar found that marketers' trust in advertising on X was already "historically low" before Musk. Since the acquisition, though, that trust has eroded even further.
The market research firm says advertisers' trust in Twitter in 2022 was at 22 percent. Now known as X, trust in that same platform is now at 12 percent in 2024.
"X has changed so much in recent years and can be unpredictable from one day to the next – it’s difficult to feel confident about your brand safety in that environment," Bubani said.
Kantar's report says that just 4 percent of advertisers believe that advertising on X provides brand safety. When compared with its competitors in the social media space, X comes out at the bottom of the heap. Google is top for brand safety at 39 percent, according to Kantar. As for trust and innovative advertising, X "scores outside of the global top ten." TikTok is viewed as the most innovative and YouTube tops the trust barometer.
The contrast between X and other social media platforms in this space is made even more stark by this graph included in Kantar's report, which provides visuals for those stats.
X is unlikely to change course under Musk's leadership. Just this week, Musk came under fire for promoting a Tucker Carlson video on X with a guest that shared sympathies for Hitler.
"Very interesting. Worth watching," Musk said.
Musk later deleted the post.
