Advertisers return to X (and do so largely for fear of Elon Musk)

The acquisition of X, the once social network known as Twitter, by Elon Musk caused a copious hemorrhage in the coffers of the company, whose advertising income became more than half. Moved by the anxiety that caused them the new and the political moderation of X contents under the baton of Musk, dozens of advertisers rushed to hold the social network. This unleashed a fierce battle between the South African and the advertisers, whom Musk led, in fact, to the courts in the middle of last year for an alleged boycott against X. The threats that the owner of X has had good to utter against advertisers seem, however, to be in effect, since the social network seems to meet again with the growth of its advertising incomewhich had been in free fall for three years. Thus at least a recent report published by Emarketer is collided.

According to this report, la red social Xwhich last week was acquired by XAI, the startup of AI of Elon Musk for 33,000 million dollars, He entered 2021, before his acquisition by Elon Musk in October 2022, 4.5 billion dollars from advertising. And 2,400 of those 4,500 million dollars were harvested by platform 2.0 in their native country: United States.

After formalizing that transaction, the advertising of X undertook the slope down and in 2022, the year that formalized the purchase of the social network by Musk, starred in a 7.2%diminish. More abrupt was the fall of X advertising in 2023, when advertisers cut their expense in this social network by almost 52% and led to the sinking of such income below the threshold of 2,000 million dollars.

In 2024 X’s advertising income continued the descending trajectory undertaken two years before. During the past year, advertisers based in the United States invested in X only 1.1 billion dollars, an amount below the inner year. And globally, the advertising expenditure of the brands in X fell almost 3% to 1.9 billion dollars.

The strong collapse of X’s advertising income would be, however, close to an end. A recent study by the market research company Emarketer Prophesize that in 2025 the income emanating from the public network advertising will first hit the stretch since 2021. Only in the United States advertisers will increase their advertising investment by X by 17.5% to 1.3 billion dollars. And on a global scale advertising income will reach 2.6 billion dollars, 16.5% more than in 2024.

Fear would largely motivate the return of advertisers to x

But, after so many months in free fall, how have the advertising income of X been able to overcome the flight? The answer to this question would go through fear, which would have ended up being very effective when promoting the return of advertisers. “Much of the growth of X advertising income in 2025 anchors in fear”asegura Jasmine Enberg, Analista de Emarketer.

Según Enberg, X has attracted in recent months a good number of SMEs and that has ultimately allowed him to expand his portfolio of advertisers. However, Emarketer analyst also believes that many companies are placing advertising in X solely and exclusively to mitigate eventual “legal or financial repercussions.” Enberg also considers that X’s advertising problems could be far from definitively resolved. “Fear does not motivate growth sustainably and the situation remains unstable today, especially when more and more consumers are realizing their discontent with Musk,” says Enberg.

It also seems that a direct X competitor could have indirectly contributed to the recovery of the social network’s advertising. We are talking about goal. Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to relax the moderation of content on Facebook and Instagram, where the “Fact-Checking” has been abolished in the United States, would have encouraged some advertisers and agencies to throw themselves again in the arms of X, says inberg.

The argument would be that, if advertisers continue to place advertising on the goal 2.0 platforms (of which they cannot dispense in any way in their “mix” despite the controversial changes in their content moderation policy), S sand they are somehow orphans of reasons not to announce in X.

That goal has decided to recently relax its content moderation policy does not seem to be moving away from Facebook and Instagram advertisers, rather the opposite. In 2025, finishing advertising will foreseeably grow by 13% to 182,000 million dollars.