Report Claims Advertisers Will Flee Elon’s X Next Year, Tanking Revenue Even Further

The embattled social media platform X is projected to lose even more advertising revenue next year. It really makes you wonder how many more brands can flee the site before it collapses in a pile of debt and racist memes.

On Thursday, the marketing research firm Kantar published a report that assessed the advertising outlook for numerous large web platforms. While many big name sites, like TikTok and Netflix, are highly trusted by advertisers, the website formerly known as Twitter is increasingly viewed as untrustworthy. As a result, X is expected to see a further exodus of advertisers next year.

“One brand is distinctly not well-received by marketers: X. Only 4% of marketers think X ads provide brand safety, compared to the 39% Google boasts,” the report notes. “Marketers’ overall trust for X ads have fallen from 22% to 12% since 2022. While a net 15% of marketers were favourable towards X ads in 2022, now a net 21% of marketers are unfavourable. X’s decline in the eyes of marketers didn’t start with Musk, but the trajectory hasn’t changed since his takeover.”

It continues: “26% of marketers globally now plan to decrease their spend in X in 2025.” Ironically, the lack of ads on X seems to have made users like it more. “The decreasing marketing spend in X makes consumers happier as ad load goes down. Consumer ad preference for X has gone up significantly since 2022.”

It should be noted that Musk’s site has notably already lost a ridiculous amount of revenue, presumably as a result of its weird policies and its founder’s increasingly erratic behavior. “Advertisers have been moving their marketing spend away from X for several years,” Gonca Bubani, Kantar’s global thought leadership director for media, told CNN. Bubani also said that “a turnaround [of advertising money] currently seems unlikely.”

Gizmodo reached out to X for comment.

The report’s results are not particularly surprising, given that Musk has all but made his site the poster child for what might be termed “brand danger.” He’s done that by allowing a huge swell of pro-Nazi and 4chan-adjacent swill to explode all over users’ feeds, while also basically declaring war on the advertising industry itself. Last month, X sued a global advertising consortium known as GARM, or the Global Alliance for Responsible Media. GARM is essentially a brand safety organization that dissuades companies from advertising on platforms that host content that may turn consumers off. GARM had previously warned advertisers that X was too toxic to be trusted, and encouraged companies not to advertise on its platform. X and Musk turned this boycott into a “free speech” issue, claiming that there was a weird corporate conspiracy to stifle the “marketplace of ideas,” as CEO Linda Yaccarino put it. GARM was ultimately forced to shut down as a result of the lawsuit.

Long story short: suing a brand safety organization out of existence probably isn’t the best way to signal to advertisers that you have their best interests at heart. With so much apparent ill-will displayed towards their industry, it’s not exactly surprising that the feeling from advertisers would appear to be mutual.