Elon Musk says main advertisers are returning to Twitter after preliminary exodus

Elon Musk, talking Saturday throughout a Twitter Areas broadcast, mentioned that Apple had “absolutely resumed” promoting with the corporate. Apple was Twitter’s largest advertiser beforehand.

The announcement adopted a brief Tweet Friday night thanking advertisers for returning to the model. That adopted a report from tech outlet Platformer than Amazon was resuming advertisements on the social media web site, and plans to spend $100 million per yr.

Amazon, nonetheless, by no means stopped promoting on the platform, a supply acquainted with the matter advised Fortune, making it unclear precisely who Musk was thanking.

Neither firm has publicly mentioned its promoting plans near to Twitter. And there’s no reported standing change from Interpublic Group (IPG), one of many world’s largest promoting firms, which advisable its shoppers pause spending on Twitter final month, resulting from moderation issues. The corporate’s shoppers embody Walmart, American Categorical, Coca-Cola, Fitbit, GoPro, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss & Co, Mattel and Spotify. It manages roughly $40 billion in advertising and marketing campaigns worldwide.

Advertiser reticence has been one in every of Musk’s largest issues since his takeover of the corporate. In November, he went on a rant about activist teams pressuring firms about Twitter’s moderation insurance policies and excessive cost-cutting strategies.

“Twitter has had a large drop in income, resulting from activist teams pressuring advertisers, regardless that nothing has modified with content material moderation and we did the whole lot we might to appease the activists,” he wrote. “Extraordinarily tousled! They’re attempting to destroy free speech in America.”

The anti-free speech declare is a go-to for Musk when he feels promoting income is being threatened. Throughout his latest dust-up with Apple, the place he briefly accused the corporate of attempting to dam Twitter from its app retailer and halting most promoting, he posited “Do they hate free speech in America?”

Twitter’s advertiser issues have come at an important time. The vacation interval, in addition to the World Cup, are peak promoting spend intervals. And Twitter, seemingly, is lacking out on a lot of that largess.

Amazon declined to touch upon the file to Fortune. Apple didn’t instantly return Fortune’s request for remark. 

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