If advertisers continue to pause their spending on Twitter/X, the company might lose up to $75 million in revenue by the end of the year, The New York Times reports.
Advertisers including IBM, Disney, and Apple paused their advertising campaigns on the platform earlier this month after X owner Elon Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory on the platform earlier this month. Shortly after, Media Matters also published a report showing ads were being displayed beside pro-Nazi content on the platform, an allegation Musk has sued the non-profit over.
According to The Times, more than 200 different companies including Microsoft, Coca-Cola, and Airbnb have halted or are considering pausing their ads on the social network. According to internal documents viewed by the paper, that could lead to $75 million in revenue lost by the end of the year.
In a statement Friday, X claimed that the paper was looking at either outdated numbers or an exercise meant to evaluate total risk. X claims the company is only at risk of losing $11 million, a number that has fluctuated as some advertisers have returned to the platform and others have allegedly increased their spending.
The recent advertiser exodus comes after a year of declining advertising revenue. In July, Musk tweeted that the company had around 50% in advertising revenue since he took it over.
Many advertisers left the platform earlier in the year after Musk implemented changes including cutting back on content moderation and selling access to verified status on the social network. Those changes have caused an uptick in hate speech, spam, and bots on the platform.
