Ad Execs Speak Out: Musk’s Lawsuit Makes ExTwitter Even Less Appealing

Would you believe that Elon suing former advertisers for no longer advertising on ExTwitter isn’t magically making advertisers want to come back and is, instead, driving them further away?

A quick timeline:

• In November of last year, Elon Musk told advertisers to go fuck themselves if they were upset about content on ExTwitter. This was after the site had already lost a ton of advertisers mostly due to Elon’s own penchant for sharing ignorant, bigoted nonsense, which made advertisers feel unsafe to have their brands associated with Musk.
• On July 1st, ExTwitter “excitedly” rejoined GARM, the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, announcing they were “proud” to work with GARM to make sure that brands felt safe on the site formerly known as Twitter. They timed this to line up with the big Cannes Lions festival, which is where a ton of important advertising deals are generally locked up. ExTwitter seemed to feel it needed to do this to get advertisers to trust the platform again.
• On July 10th, Jim Jordan released a typically misleading report accusing GARM of colluding to cut off funding from conservative media, including Elon’s ExTwitter. Elon then announced he would be suing GARM, the same organization his company excitedly rejoined a week earlier.
• On August 1st, Jim Jordan sent letters to a long list of advertisers demanding to know why they won’t advertise on Trumpist media sites, which is frankly none of his fucking business.
• On August 6th, Elon followed through on his threat and had ExTwitter sue GARM, the World Federation of Advertisers (the body that created GARM), and some of the biggest brand companies in the world (CVS, Mars, Orsted, Unilever).
• On August 8th, GARM (which was a two-person non-profit) announced it was shutting down, noting that it simply did not have the resources to fight the lawsuit, which would likely cost many times over GARM’s operating budget.

Many people, quite reasonably, called out the absolute absurdity of Elon basically suing advertisers for not wanting to advertise on his site. However, I saw plenty of people suggest that there was a long-term strategy here, and that by suing, he was making sure that future attempts to pull advertising from the site would be more limited in power.

You know, just like how a bunch of silly people keep thinking that Donald Trump is somehow playing 4D chess, when the man wouldn’t know a chess board from a Ouija board.

This week, CEO-in-title-only Linda Yaccarino gave another one of her word salad interviews to the friendly NY Post. She insisted this wasn’t about punishing advertisers for refusing to advertise, but about “fixing a broken ad ecosystem.”

“We were victimized by a small group of people pushing their authority or ability to monopolize what gets monetized,” Yaccarino said.

“GARM was just a symptom, but [finding] the root cause of the entire ecosystem being broken, that’s what the suit is about.”

And, I mean, Yaccarino used to be a top ad exec at NBCUniversal. She has to know that what she’s saying is obvious bullshit. She has to know that none of her former colleagues will buy any of it. ExTwitter was not “victimized by a small group of people pushing their authority.” ExTwitter was “victimized” by a very rich owner who doesn’t understand some of the fundamentals of advertising and how things work. He personally drove billions of dollars worth of advertising away.

Yaccarino could have taken the honest position and just said “look, everyone knows that we’ve driven away advertisers and deliberately decided to make X a platform that is unsafe for brands, but that’s the position Elon has taken because he thinks it’s better for free speech.” It would still be stupid, but at least it would be accurate.

There is no “root cause” of the system being broken here. The “broken” part is the guy who massively overpaid for Twitter, fired all the people who understood how stuff works, and then wrongly insisted that “free speech” meant he had to enable the worst people on the planet to be assholes on his platform (and personally retweet many of them) and then play the victim when advertisers took a look and decided “there are better places to put our money.”

So, anyway, as for “fixing the root cause” and how this lawsuit was a part of a “long game” to keep advertisers on ExTwitter? Yeah, that’s not working. City A.M. has an article in which they talk to various advertising execs whose response is, more or less, this makes us way less interested in ever advertising on anything Elon is connected to.

But rather than scare brands into submission, bosses in the media industry told City A.M. that the move – which was variously described as “ego-driven”, “cult-like” and “insane” – is only likely to push already disillusioned brands further away from the ad spend-reliant site.

Alex Tait, the founder of media and marketing agency Entropy, and who previously led Unilever’s ad spending strategy, said: “Musk’s lawsuit is likely driven by his ego rather than commercial logic.”

And it’s not because of GARM. It’s not because of collusion. It’s not got anything to do with being woke or about ideology at all. It’s because it’s fucking crazy and no advertising exec wants to deal with the headaches Elon brings:

Joseph Teaside, head of tech at media analyst Enders Analysis, said: “Advertisers just don’t want the drama…

“[They] have already left in droves as X has been overrun by bots, racists and pornography since the Musk takeover. Some have stuck around or come back, tempted by low CPMs, but scandal after scandal is convincing large advertisers that it’s just not worth the hassle.”

It’s just not worth dealing with the mess.

Also, all the old reasons it made sense to advertise on Twitter are basically gone:

Meanwhile Alex Wilson, a senior strategist at London agency Pitch, told City A.M. that whereas pre-Musk Twitter was once a good avenue for brands to insert themselves into the biggest conversations, its unregulated nature has made it hard for to convince his clients to part way with money on the site.

“The great salespeople was have left, the verification system is a mess, half your followers are now sexbots, the most interesting people have moved somewhere else, the people still there are posting less, and your timeline is just and endless stream of misery.

“How do you make the case for advertising on a platform like that?”

So, Elon and Linda, maybe it’s time to take a good look in the mirror. It’s not the ad ecosystem that is broken here. The problem is you. You guys fucked up.

And no lawsuit is going to change that.