Many big firms halt advertisements on Twitter after Elon Musk's warning; 'Will name shame'

Amid the ongoing layoffs at the micro-blogging site company, Twitter, several big companies have stopped putting paid advertisements on the platform.

It is said that United Airlines, General Mills, General Motors, Pfizer Inc., and other businesses have all suspended their advertisements on Twitter. Besides these companies, Audi halted their Twitter advertisements amid speculations that how the social media network will function under new owner Elon Musk.  

Furthermore, an increasing number of advertisers are leaving the site due to worries that Elon Musk may weaken security and anti-misinformation measures. A representative for the company that makes Cheerios and Lucky Charms cereal stated, "We will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend,” New York Post reported. In addition to this, according to Whaewon Choi-Wiles, an Audi spokesperson, the German carmaker is stopping advertisements and "will continue to evaluate the situation". 

Big companies stopped Twitter ads

As per the CBS News report, advertisers are worried about whether content filtering would continue to be as strict under Elon Musk, who calls himself a "free speech absolutist," and whether continuing to use Twitter will damage their businesses. 

Mondelez International, the company that makes Oreos, has temporarily halted its Twitter advertising, according to the Wall Street Journal. Advertisers are even concerned about a wave of management resignations and Musk's ambitions for content filtering, Journal reported. 

These companies have followed the footsteps of carmaker General Motors, which last week said that paid advertising on Twitter had been temporarily suspended. In order to better "understand the direction of the platform," General Motors said that it has temporarily halted its Twitter advertising. The pause, according to GM, is a customary action when a media platform experiences a big modification. 

Although Twitter is by no means the largest platform used by marketers for digital marketing, it generates about 90 per cent of its revenue from advertisements. About 75 per cent of all digital advertisements are displayed on Google, Amazon, and Meta, with the other 25 per cent appearing on all other platforms. According to predictions made by Insider Intelligence, Twitter will represent 0.9 per cent of global digital ad expenditure in 2022, while meta will see a 21.4 per cent increase in the same year (2022). 

It is pertinent to mention that the majority of Twitter's senior executives have left the company in the past week, including the one in charge of sales of advertising. The platform's chief customer officer Sarah Personette tweeted earlier this week that her access to work was officially terminated on Monday night after she announced her resignation from Twitter on Friday. 

Meanwhile, Elon Musk threatened to publicly name-shame Twitter advertisers who removed their ads after the microblogging service announced major layoffs. Elon Musk said on Twitter while replying to a user, "Thank you. A thermonuclear name & shame is exactly what will happen if this continues.”  

(Image: AP/ Unsplash)