Twitter Offering ‘Largest Advertiser Incentive Ever’ as Brands Leave Platform and Revenues Decline

Elon Musk on a smartphone placed on printed Twitter logos, on April 28, 2022. Dado Ruvic/Illustration/Reuters

Twitter is offering advertisers incentives to increase spending after Elon Musk’s takeover and management directives resulted in multiple brands curbing their ad investment on the social media platform.

Advertising sales account for about 90 percent of Twitter’s revenue.

Platforms and ad networks approach agencies for advertising as part of their business model. In emails sent by Twitter to ad agencies, reviewed by multiple media, the company claimed it was launching its “largest advertiser incentive ever” in December with “value add” that offers advertisers additional impressions based on the amount they spend on the platform.

According to Marketing Brew, one of the agencies that received the email, an advertiser spending $200,000 in the United States will get 25 percent value add, and if they spend $350,000, they get a 50 percent value add. However, if any company spends $500,000, Twitter will give them 100 percent value add, which is capped at $1 million per advertiser.

An ad executive said to Marketing Brew that the 100 percent offer was “absurdly high,” adding that, “I’d never expect to see even a 20 percent value add from anyone unless I was spending millions in an upfront deal.”

The offer is valid until the end of the year, and does not include Twitter’s Amplify product, according to the email.

Another email featured slightly different offers for United Kingdom-based brands, and the rest of the world, according to the Financial Times.

Mega Brands vs. Elon Musk

Since Musk’s buyout of Twitter, many brands have been apprehensive of the direction that the highly influential platform would take, especially since the billionaire advocated for free speech.

Over the past few weeks, Musk has reinstated several formerly banned accounts back on Twitter, including that of former president Donald Trump, investigative journalist Project Veritas, and Christian satire site The Babylon Bee. The move resulted in backlash from companies which mostly follow progressive policies.

While some major brands, including General Mills, General Motors, and United Airlines, publicly announced their ad suspension on Twitter, others appeared to be “quiet quitting.”

Regarding the situation, Musk said, “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America,” following which, he said he will “thermonuclear name & shame” companies that quit.

Before the end of November, The Washington Post said that over a third of Twitter’s top 100 marketers had not advertised on the platform during an analysis the news organization conducted over a period of two weeks.

Major brands such as Jeep, Mars candy, cereal maker Kellogg, pharma giant Merck, and Verizon had paused advertising per the outlet’s report.

Other brands, including United Airlines, Carlsberg, Mondelez, and General Motors, have also stopped displaying ads on Twitter, according to the Financial Times, which said that agencies like Omnicom Media and Interpublic Group have suggested clients to pause ads resulting in an adverse impact on the platform’s $5 billion business.

However, with nearly 120 million followers, Musk has been increasingly optimistic regarding the platform. “Twitter is now serving almost 90 billion tweet impressions per day!” he wrote in a tweet, and in another tweet, “There are about 500M tweets per day & billions of impressions, so hate speech impressions are <0.1% of what’s seen on Twitter!”

On Nov. 22, Musk said that Twitter added “1.6M daily active users” the prior week, “another all-time high.”