The platform formerly known as Twitter has always been a tricky proposition for brands. From toxic interactions to the policing of explicit content, there have always been significant caveats to its large and engaged user base. Until recently, however, its status as the home of breaking news and online discussion had made it a central part of the marketing mix.
Yet after 17 solid years, that status could be in jeopardy. Under Elon Musk’s leadership, extreme voices on the platform appear to have been amplified, and may have contributed towards civil unrest in the UK. With the toxicity of X seemingly growing, is it time for every brand to consider leaving—or do we risk throwing out the baby with the bathwater?
The bird is the word
Like most social media platforms, Twitter’s original ambitions were fairly benign. It popularised the concept of ‘microblogging’, or sharing your opinions in bite-sized snippets. Celebrities quickly took to Twitter as a way to get around traditional PR, and connect with fans directly. Unlike other popular social networks at the time, it was a public platform, where people could talk to you directly without joining your network, and gaining access to your personal information.
The celebs lent it legitimacy, and brought in a regular audience. Unfortunately, having a direct line to celebrities and other individuals came with some drawbacks. Harassment became a major issue on Twitter, with the platform being slow to introduce methods to silence or block individual accounts, or tweets with particular keywords.
Arguments were also rife, and the platform’s refusal to ban explicit content put off many advertisers. The site was also slow to ban individuals for hate speech, allowing them to build large followings, and propagate their messages.
Despite this challenging environment, brands have flourished on what is now X. Some leaned into the site’s reputation for ironic or caustic humour, like the American fast food chain Wendy’s, which pioneered the style of ‘roasting’ customers and competing brands. Others have used the platform as a customer service tool to provide live support and updates; or to spread positive messages, and build strong, self-policing communities.
Twitter had done good work on this front. Former CEO Jack Dorsey had put stricter guidelines in place on acceptable behaviour, eventually banning former President Trump for violating its Civic Integrity policy. New controls had been added to make it easier to block and filter content, while more staff were hired for its Trust and Safety teams to help moderate content. A Trust and Safety Council was also formed to help guide the future development of the site, including academics and representatives from civil rights organisations.
X rated
Everything changed with the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. Having lost its name recognition with a baffling rebrand, Musk proceeded to gut staff with a round of mass layoffs, including the majority of its content moderators.
The option to report posts was removed entirely, and replaced with Community Notes, which allow users to add extra context to misleading or harmful posts (including ads!). Verified accounts were now bought as well as earned, leading to apparently ‘official’ accounts tweeting misinformation, sometimes posing as real people or businesses.
Musk himself has repeatedly shared misinformation to his large audience, including unevidenced claims about Olympic boxer Imane Khelif, and a fake Telegraph article claiming that far-right rioters in the UK were being sent to detention camps. He has repeatedly resisted efforts to combat misinformation on X, trumpeting his commitment to preserving ‘free speech’. This has involved restoring accounts that were previously banned for violating Twitter’s policies, including President Trump and former EDL leader Tommy Robinson.
Musk’s retweet of an antisemitic post in November—calling it “the actual truth”—was the catalyst for many advertisers to pause their ads on the platform. Musk subsequently rowed back on this, but not before telling the advertising industry to “go fuck yourself”, although he claimed this was aimed at Disney CEO Bob Iger specifically. That came after a war of words between Musk and Disney, the latter being involved in a legal dispute with Florida governor and Musk ally Ron DeSantis.
Xplaining the situation
So what’s the upshot of all this controversy? The obvious retort is that the platform is still extremely popular, though not as big as it was pre-takeover. Around 27% of UK adults browse X every day, with the site having lost some market share to competitors such as Mastodon, Bluesky, and Meta’s Threads.
Yet while some celebrities, politicians and charities have begun to openly defect to rivals, most major brands are still active on X. Accounts such as @StarWars and @MarvelStudios that stopped posting during the antisemitism controversy were back within two weeks, and many never went that far.
Advertising is a slightly different story. While ad spend data on X isn’t publicly available, monthly ad sale revenue is estimated to have fallen by almost two thirds in the three months after Musk’s takeover. Total ad revenue for 2023 was estimated at $2.5 billion by Bloomberg—not chump change, but a colossal drop-off from the $4.7 billion it earned in the previous financial year.
This aligns with Musk’s public proclamation in July 2023 that ad revenue was down by around 50%. There’s a clear weight of evidence that the value of advertising on X no longer outweighs the risk of ads appearing next to controversial content.
Equally relevant is the state of the competition. While around a quarter of the UK population still use X daily, it is fourth among all social networks, and not even in the top 5 for the lucrative under-17 demographic.
As well as issues around ad placement, X also suffers from its mixed media focus, with competitors such as Instagram and TikTok providing more visual real estate for images and videos, leaving X with a paltry average engagement rate of 0.05%. Users on average also spend more time in these apps than on X, which ranks 7th in terms of average hours per month, with users spending more than 6 times as long on TikTok.
Managing Xpectations
The continued presence of most brands on X is enough to suggest that not everyone should immediately abandon ship. But the role of X for brands does appear to be changing, particularly in terms of ad spend. The growing risks associated with advertising on the platform are clearly outweighing the benefits it offers compared to other social networks.
The decline in ad spend on X will inevitably open up opportunities for some brands to fill the gaps left by competitors. But even then, it’s hard to know what the actual value of those ads will be. Bots have become another worsening issue on X, meaning that ads may not even be being viewed by real people. The demographic shift meanwhile suggests that its user base may continue to trend older and more male, due to the perceptions of the platform as increasingly right-wing, and as a toxic environment for women.
The role it continues to serve as a place for live updates can’t be ignored, however. X is still a destination for breaking news, and the first place many people will look if they want to engage with a brand for customer service. These features won’t apply to every business, and are replicable with other tools, like a live chat feature or Google Business Messages. But until one clear competitor to X emerges, brands that avoid X entirely will inevitably lose some visibility.
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There is a moral case for abandoning X entirely given its role in furthering far-right hatred. Yet the complicated reality of the platform is that it remains broadly popular, with a core of users who actively oppose the direction it is taking. It’s also still the first place many people will go to check out a news story, file a complaint or ask a question—giving it utility beyond marketing.
It remains to be seen how quickly X’s popularity declines, and whether any single platform can truly compete. For now though, it’s hard to advocate anything but a cautious approach, and a roadmap towards an eventual exit. To paraphrase Monty Python, the Twitter we knew has ceased to be: it is an X-website.