Since Elon Musk took over Twitter, half of the platform's top 100 advertisers have opted out and no longer advertise on the website.
While the new owner tweeted this Friday that he will bring back the verification tag system next week, at $8 a month for each subscriber, and on Thursday issued a general amnesty for all accounts banned for harassment, abuse, threats or misinformation, a A Media Matters for America report explained that those 50 advertisers who have left Twitter have spent some 2 billion dollars on advertising since 2020, of which 750 million have been invested throughout 2022.
An additional seven advertisers have slowed their advertising to almost nothing, according to that filing. These companies paid the social network about 255 million.
Chevrolet, Chipotle Mexican Grill, Inc., Ford, Jeep, Kyndryl, Merck
The report stated that despite the financial hit from the substantial loss of ad revenue, Musk continues “his spree of brand-unsafe actions, including amplifying conspiracy theories, unilaterally repossessing the account of former President Donald Trump, courting and engaging with far-right accounts and institutionalizing a random verification system that allows extremists and scammers to purchase those labels.”
The blue label verification system had to be canceled by the new address in view of any account being falsified. Even Jesus Christ achieved one of those labels.
The pharmaceutical Eli Lilly stopped advertising a few days ago after the irruption of a false account of that company in which it was posted that the insulin was going to be free. This caused chaos and the pharmaceutical company had to make an official denial. She previously asked Twitter to remove that account, but it remained active for hours.
As a consequence, another twelve companies in this sector stopped buying ads on the platform.
The writer Stephen King tweeted about it: "Very soon, the only advertiser that will continue on Twitter will be My Pillow." It was the allusion to Mike Lindell, the manufacturer of pillows under that brand, a radical Trumpist and one of the main propagators of conspiracy theories about the non-existent electoral robbery of the former US president.
To all this, Musk pointed out this Friday that the new system of verification labels will have several colors, breaking with the monopoly of the blue of the bird that chirps. Company accounts will have a gold label, government accounts will be gray, and individuals will keep the blue label.
