Here’s How Much Ad Money Musk Could Lose

It’s not easy to own a platform like X. And Elon Musk, its owner, knows it all too well. Especially after endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory, according to which Jewish people and leftists are engineering the ethnic and cultural replacement of white populations. The goal is to ostensibly complete white genocide with non-white immigrants.

The White House also stepped in, calling that theory “hideous” and  an "abhorrent promotion of antisemitic and racist hate" that "runs against our core values as Americans."

Musk has attempted to fix the situation by traveling to Israel where he met the country’s PM Benjamin Netanyahu and holding an X space with him.

Still, it might be too late, with X potentially losing even more advertisers – and with them, money too. 

A Reuters analysis showed that the ad revenue of the platform has shrunk over 50 per cent year on year in every month since Musk completed the takeover. Meanwhile, a fresh report by NYT states that it may lose up to 75 million in revenue, with companies like Airbnb, Coca-Cola and Microsoft have halted ads or are considering doing so.

The appointment of Linda Yaccarino, an ad guru from NBCUniversal, didn’t seem to help entice more advertisers while the subscription plan, introduced by Musk, is yet to deliver results.

The situation seems to be somewhat reflected in Yaccarino's X handle. While she has pinned Musk’s tweet, where he promises to file a thermonuclear lawsuit “against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company”, most of her tweets are focused on seemingly non-essential matters. 

In some ways they’re outright bizarre. This is the case with Thanksgiving day when she for some reason spelled turkey with a capital T (possibly confusing poultry with a country), saying: “Let’s talk Turkey – 4 million posts about Thanksgiving yesterday, +25% since last year. The top emoji? Of course [emoji turkey]! It all happens on X.”

Another example of that: “Users like posts a *million times a minute*. That’s a lotta love—and it all happens on X.”

With X’s future in the EU remaining unclear due to its weak anti-disinformation policies, the ad troubles are only likely to keep accumulating.