Twitter Chief Elon Musk Tries to Reassure Advertisers
Summary
- Billionaire says he is receptive to brands’ concerns but will give priority to free speech
Twitter Chief Executive Elon Musk made his latest appeal to advertisers on Tuesday, seeking to reassure them that the platform is a hospitable and valuable vehicle for their brands.
Many advertisers pulled their ads from Twitter after Mr. Musk’s takeover of the social-media platform was completed in October, either out of concern that Mr. Musk might weaken content moderation, potentially leading to more hate speech on the social-media platform, or because of the uncertainty surrounding the company’s direction under its new leadership. Advertising represented almost 90% of Twitter’s revenue in 2021.
Mr. Musk—who spoke in a conversation with Linda Yaccarino, chairman of global advertising and partnerships at NBCUniversal—said he was eager to hear legitimate concerns that advertisers might have about Twitter, but he emphasized that he wouldn’t succumb to pressures to make changes he doesn’t believe in.
“It’s totally cool to say that you want to have your advertising appear in certain places of Twitter and not in other places," he said at the Possible marketing conference. “But it is not cool to say what Twitter will do. And if that means losing advertising dollars, we’ll lose them. But freedom of speech is paramount."
Mr. Musk later said, “We’re trying to achieve here a sensible middle ground, or we’re trying to satisfy a range of things, which is how to ensure the public has their voice…but also that you’re able to serve your brands and improve the perception of your brands, and your sales as well."
The billionaire CEO of Tesla Inc. has been making the rounds recently. The second part of an interview with Tucker Carlson on Fox News Channel ran Tuesday night. The conversation covered a range of topics, including Mr. Musk’s concerns about potential abuses of artificial intelligence; the banking industry; inflation; and the billionaire—who is also chief executive of rocket company SpaceX—saying he hasn’t seen evidence of aliens.
“I’ve seen no evidence of aliens," Mr. Musk said, adding that he would immediately tweet about it if he did.
Fox News parent Fox Corp. and The Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.
In an interview last week with the BBC, Mr. Musk said many advertisers had returned to the platform or indicated they planned to. Yet many big advertisers appear to have stayed away or greatly reduced their spending on Twitter, according to third-party data.
Of Twitter’s former top 100 advertisers from before Mr. Musk bought the company, 37 appeared to spend nothing on Twitter advertising during the first quarter of this year, according to market-intelligence firm Sensor Tower. Of that former top 100, a further 24 brands appeared to have reduced their average monthly Twitter ad spending by 80% or more compared with the period before the acquisition, according to Sensor Tower.
Mr. Musk elaborated Tuesday on Twitter’s policy for content moderation, which he has described as freedom of speech but not freedom of reach. “If somebody has something hateful to say, it doesn’t mean you should give them a megaphone," Mr. Musk said. He added, “We’re not going to recommend hateful content to people."
Pressed by Ms. Yaccarino about his own sometimes-controversial tweets, Mr. Musk said the policy applies to him as well. He addressed concerns about those tweets, saying people should take them with a grain of salt and saying that it is difficult to convey tone, such as sarcasm, in a tweet.
