Hours before news broke on Thursday that he had completed his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Elon Musk wrote an open letter to advertisers stressing that he doesn’t want the platform to become a “free-for-all hellscape.”
But that attempt at reassuring the advertising industry, which makes up the vast majority of Twitter’s business, was quickly overshadowed by Musk’s first days as the new owner of the platform. Some industry experts are now predicting an advertiser exodus could be coming sooner than expected...
“It seems like a reasonable time for advertisers to rethink things,” said David Karpf, associate professor in the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. “I think advertisers are going to look at this and say, is the weak Twitter advertising product becoming a better or worse investment? And it’s going to be the same or a little worse … advertisers certainly aren’t going to start spending more on Twitter anytime soon.”