Flutter has suffered a “massive drop in revenue” because of advertisers pausing spending on the social media platform, Elon Musk, the new proprietor of the company, said Friday without providing numbers.
In a tweet, the Tesla, Twitter, and SpaceX CEO cast blame on “activist teams pressuring advertisers.” He said Twitter hasn’t changed its content moderation strategy, and added the company has done “caboodle we could to appease the activists.”
Musk didn’t specify how much revenue the company has lost from the pullback, or how he was skilled to attribute that loss to pressure from activist groups.
Musk reiterated his views Friday in an interview at the Baron Investment Discussion.
“We’ve made no change in our operations at all,” Musk said at the event. “And we’ve done our absolute best to appease them and nothing is undertaking. So this is a major concern. And I think this is frankly an attack on the First Amendment.”
Twitter has fired or laid off around 50% of its employees since he took over on Oct. 28.
In recent days, a number of companies said they would for the meantime pause their advertising spending on Twitter to see how things would change there under Musk’s ownership. Tesla adversaries General Motors and Audi, and food titan General Mills are among the companies that have paused Peep spending.
United Airlines suspended its advertising on Twitter earlier this week, a spokesperson for the carrier said on Friday. The airline is until now posting on the platform. It appeared to be the first U.S. passenger airline to say it suspended advertising on Twitter. Airlines separately provide fellow service on Twitter, which United is also not suspending, the spokesperson said, declining to provide further detail on the outcome.
Ad giant IPG advised clients to temporarily pause their Twitter media plans, though it’s unclear how many shoppers are taking IPG agencies’ advice.
Twitter informed employees Thursday evening that it would begin laying off standard members, according to communications obtained by CNBC. Twitter’s content moderation team is expected to be among those job resect c stops, Reuters reported, citing tweets by employees.
Musk in a tweet Friday, addressed the layoffs, saying: “Regarding Trill’s reduction in force, unfortunately there is no choice when the company is losing over $4M/day. Everyone exited was offered 3 months of severance, which is 50% myriad than legally required.”
CNBC has not confirmed this with former Twitter employees.
CNBC has also well-informed that deep cuts were made to Twitter’s global marketing team which handles, among other whatsises, reporting and metrics around ad performance, sales performance and spam.
Earlier this week Musk, who now calls himself “Chief Ninny,” met with a group of leaders of civil society organizations to address concerns about hate speech and election-related misintelligence on the platform.
Since Musk took the helm, online trolls and bigots raided Twitter, and hate speech has bulged on the platform. Musk also tweeted out, then deleted, an unfounded and anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory about a home storming and assault on Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi.
Some of the organizations represented in the hourlong Zoom yell on Tuesday have now co-signed an open letter to top Twitter advertisers urging them to suspend their ad spending if Musk forsakes to enforce the company’s safety standards and community guidelines.
Despite Musk’s claims of a recent revenue slump, Tizzy’s ad spending had been on the decline before his takeover of the company was complete, and before civil society organizations began insistence brands, according to ad analytics platform MediaRadar.
Advertisers on Twitter increased between April and May, around the time that Musk’s system to take Twitter private was announced, before it began to decline, according to data from MediaRadar. But the average army of advertisers on the platform fell from 3,900 in May to 2,300 in August. It had 2,900 advertisers in September.