Twitter offers free ads to lure brands back

By Al Mayadeen English
Source: The Wall Street Journal
15 Jan 10:20

Twitter is offering free ad space in an attempt to lure advertisers back to the platform.

Twitter bird logo on street billboard (AP)

Twitter Inc. is introducing a new incentive to entice brands to return to the social media platform, which has seen its ad business deteriorate since Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover.

According to emails obtained by The Wall Street Journal, the tech company is dangling free ad space by offering to match advertisers' ad spending up to $250,000. The entire $500,000 in advertising must run by February 28, according to the emails.

Twitter didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The incentives are the company's latest attempt to entice brands to spend money on its platform. Twitter recently offered advertisers $500,000 in free advertising if they spent at least $500,000. According to ad buyers, the incentive could be used to purchase promoted tweets during Super Bowl week, a key selling period for Twitter.

Advertisers have flocked to Twitter in recent years to generate buzz around their big-game marketing efforts. According to the Journal, the Super Bowl is Twitter's most profitable day of the year.

Twitter is under financial pressure to entice back the many advertisers who have stopped spending since Musk bought the company in late October. They left primarily due to concerns about Musk's approach to content moderation and the possibility that their ads would appear near controversial content.

Musk stated in November that Twitter had experienced a "massive drop in revenue" and was losing $4 million per day.

Many major corporations, including Pfizer Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc., General Motors Co. and Volkswagen AG, have paused their spending on the platform.

According to an analysis by Sensor Tower data, more than 75 of Twitter's top 100 ad spenders prior to Musk's takeover were not spending on the platform as of the week ending Jan. 8. It is critical to persuade advertisers to return to Twitter. Ads generated nearly 90% of Twitter's $5.1 billion in revenue in 2021.

To be eligible for the latest incentive, a brand must use specific Twitter products, such as the recently-released keyword-avoidance tool, which allows advertisers to create a list of up to 1,000 keywords and avoid having their ads appear above or below tweets that contain those words.

This month, Musk said that he expects Twitter will break even in 2023. He previously had invoked the specter of bankruptcy.

He added that Twitter had been on track to post negative cash flow of $3 billion a year before the company slashed costs, in part by cutting thousands of jobs, adding that the staff was roughly 2,000 people compared with about 8,000 previously.

Earlier this month, Twitter said it is planning to lift some sanctions that were placed on political ads in 2019, so as to allow political advertising to be displayed on the social media platform, according to a Tweet posted by the company.

"We believe that cause-based advertising can facilitate public conversation around important topics. Today, we're relaxing our ads policy for cause-based ads in the US. We also plan to expand the political advertising we permit in the coming weeks," Twitter safety said in a Tweet.

"Moving forward, we will align our advertising policy with that of TV and other media outlets. As with all policy changes, we will first ensure that our approach to reviewing and approving content protects people on Twitter. We'll share more details as this work progresses," it added as a thread.