Dec 04, 2023 11:45:00

X (formerly Twitter), which is suffering from boycotts by major advertisers, accelerates its policy of relying on small and medium-sized enterprises, and also outsources some advertising sales to third parties

In response to

the discriminatory comments made by Elon Musk, the owner of X (formerly Twitter), companies such as Apple and Disney have stopped advertising on X one after another. The conflict between large companies and X is deepening, with people responding by saying, ``If you're going to threaten me, fuck me.'' It has been reported that X is increasing its focus on attracting advertising from small and medium-sized businesses in order to compensate for the significant revenue source due to the withdrawal of major advertisers.

X ramps up new advertising strategy following Elon Musk's tirade
https://www.ft.com/content/cdf789a2-8872-41fe-94e7-ff30ebe631b7

X turns to small businesses; tells big ones to go f*ck themselves
https://9to5mac.com/2023/12/01/x-turns-to-small-businesses/

The Financial Times reported on December 2, 2023 that X is doubling its investment to encourage advertising spending by small businesses.

In a statement to the Financial Times, .We will take this further in the future.'

At the same time, outsourcing of advertising business is also progressing, and the company is already working on partnerships with third parties such as JumpCrew, an emerging American marketing company. Going forward, X plans to outsource some of its advertising sales targeting small and medium-sized businesses to the company.

It has been

reported that X will suffer a revenue loss of up to $75 million (about 11 billion yen) by the end of 2023 due to the boycott of major advertisers. X disputes this estimate, stating that the lost advertising costs are between $10 million (approximately 1,465 million yen) and $12 million (approximately 1,758 million yen).

X's problem is not just the loss of income. Mr. Elon Musk acquired X in 2022 for $44 billion (approximately 6.33 trillion yen at the time), but X said that the company's capital value to employees was only $19 billion (approximately 6.33 trillion yen). 2.8 trillion yen), or less than half of the acquisition price. In addition, X's finances require repayment of a large amount of interest amounting to 1 billion dollars (approximately 146.5 billion yen) annually.

One former senior sales executive at They will have to make a choice whether to move on or not.'

However, X's lack of 'commitment to building a world-class advertising platform' has put it behind rivals like Meta, Google and TikTok, and 'such a turnaround will be difficult.' the former executive added.

The departure of major advertisers from X due to Mr. Musk's bad tongue was also a disaster for Linda Yaccarino, who was promoted to CEO due to her connections in the advertising industry. Ms. Yaccarino attended her daughter's wedding in November 2023. According to him, he received a flood of calls from friends and acquaintances telling him that he should resign as CEO of X because his reputation would be damaged.

9to5Mac, an IT news site, said, ``Even if The behavior is nothing new, but it's also hard to understand why Ms. Yaccarino would sacrifice her own reputation to support Mr. Musk. If I had done that, I'm sure we would have lost.'

In fact, GIGAZINE also received a message from X saying, ``We would like to hold a meeting to have small and medium-sized businesses actively advertise,'' and we held an online meeting on Google Meet on October 30, 2023. At that time, X said, ``It will be easier to get results if you use ``impression charging'' instead of ``link click charging'' as a charging method.'' ``The targeting setting is ``and'' instead of ``or,'' so if you want to distribute a lot, you should set the targeting. There was a suggestion that it would be better to keep it to the bare minimum necessary.