NYT: Twitter ad revenue in home country down by up to 59 percent

Twitter’s U.S. ad revenue is said to have been down about 59 percent from early April to early May compared to the same period last year. Elon Musk’s platform is also said to ‘regularly’ miss weekly advertising turnover expectations by sometimes as much as 30 percent.

This would appear from internal documents seen by The New York Times and would be an indication of what awaits the company in the near future. The newspaper was able to conclude from both the documents and conversations with several current and former Twitter employees that advertising revenues in the home country will not increase for the time being. Several advertising agencies told the newspaper that ‘drastic changes to the platform, inadequate support from Twitter and concerns about the continued existence of misleading and toxic content on the platform’ are causing lower client spending.

Owner Musk interprets this differently, because according to him, advertisers would put ‘extreme pressure’ on the company and want to make Twitter ‘bankrupt’, The New York Times quotes based on a Twitter Space audio event. Some advertisers, including General Motors and Volkswagen, are said to have stopped purchasing advertising spots on Twitter because the content on the platform is not advertiser-friendly. Sources tell the newspaper that Apple, Amazon and Disney, among others, are also spending less money on advertisements on the platform this year compared to last year.

Twitter is not completely dependent on advertising revenue and the company can probably compensate part of the decreased turnover with income from the various subscriptions it offers. Before Musk’s takeover, Twitter’s revenue consisted largely of advertising revenue. It is not clear how this has changed since the takeover. Musk said in early April to the BBC that most advertisers have returned and that the company is ‘roughly breaking even’.

Updated, 4:06 p.m: The title has been clarified to remove confusion about the decline in sales up to or including a certain percentage.