When you set $44 billion on fire and no one comes to your bonfire

Advertisers Hit The Pause Button With Twitter

Well, that escalated quickly.

So, Elon had a genius idea to bring Twitter into the black - instead of relying on advertising dollars, move to subscription. Every tech company is doing SaaS these days, right? How hard can it be? Well, it turns out advertising accounted for 90% of Twitter's total 2021 revenue of $5.1 billion. One could increase the ~10% not-advertising dollars by more than 9x and reach that goal, but I guess if you decreased that 90% advertising down by say... 90%, mathematically, that would work too!

Omnicom (one of the world’s largest ad agencies with over 5,000 global clients) (full disclosure, I am not and could never afford to be an Omnicom client), "cautioned their clientele about Twitter’s new verification decision. The ad agency cited the departure of top -level executives, brand safety and fake verification accounts among other reasons." Basically companies calling for Twitter to re-establish: IT, security, privacy, trust, safety, leadership, moderation, full transparency... I mean, gosh - I suppose next they'll be clamoring for Twitter to allow the option to edit tweets too! (Twitter will finally let you edit tweets — if you pay)

Normally, I would elaborate more, but these direct quotes hit the nail right on the head:

" It’s reported over past two weeks one-third of Twitter’s top 100 marketers have not been advertising." 

[Twitter has] "greatly expanded its tolerance for hate, negativity, and misinformation." 

"The situation we’re watching unfold with Twitter right now is a real-time study of the myriad of risks that advertisers face in today’s unsteady landscape. With risk avoidance being paramount for brands..."

Hmm... risk avoidance is the keyword then. Brand management. Wokeness. Cancel culture... Which reminds me, I should probably set my Myspace to private - lest my next employer finds out I'm a diehard Michael Bublé fan.

Being a poor, unemployed grad student, I'm basically just the peanut gallery when it comes to critiquing these high stakes business moves, but goodness, I am constantly checking (my borrowed/shared) Netflix top 10 for when the Elon Musk Netflix documentary unveils. Hopefully it'll displace the Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes.