“We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war,” was the ominous message beamed out from Elon Musk’s X account in August.
The threat was in retaliation to a mass exodus of advertising clients on X, the social media site formerly known as Twitter before billionaire businessman Musk took over in April 2022.
To coincide with the warcry, X launched an antitrust lawsuit against the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) and GARM members CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever for what Musk and X chief Linda Yaccarino considers an “illegal boycott”.
We tried peace for 2 years, now it is war https://t.co/elgT62uDtF
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2024
But new data from Kantar suggests that X might be losing the war for now.
In Kantar’s latest Media Reactions edition, the marketing data and analytics business firm revealed that 26% of marketers globally plan to decrease their spending with X in 2025.
“Marketers’ overall trust for X ads has fallen from 22% to 12% since 2022,” said Kantar. “While a net 15% of marketers were favourable towards X ads in 2022, now a net 21% of marketers are unfavourable.
“X’s decline in the eyes of marketers didn’t start with Musk, but the trajectory hasn’t changed since his takeover.”
The data also underscored the key reason why advertisers continue to flee X: Only 4% of marketers believe X advertisements provide “brand safety”, compared to the 39% Google boasts.
Major brands have cited concerns that their advertisements have been placed alongside hateful and illegal material, including racist and antisemitic Tweets.
But Musk has shown little inclination to tackle the dissemination of this content on X under the guise of free speech absolutism.
“Marketers are brand custodians and need to trust the platforms they use,” said Gonca Bubani, a director at Kantar.
“X has changed so much in recent years and can be unpredictable from one day to the next. It is difficult to feel confident about your brand safety in that environment.”
The data serves as another blow to X, which is currently locked in a battle to keep the site available in Brazil, its sixth-largest market.
Brazilian Justice Alexandre de Moraes imposed a ban on X after Musk failed to appoint a legal representative to face questions about the alleged dissemination of fake news and hateful rhetoric on the platform.