When Elon Musk took over Twitter and changed its name to X, ad sales dropped from $4.14 billion in 2022 to $2.00 billion in 2023, which is half of what they were before. EMARKETER thinks that these drops will keep happening until 2026, which is the end of our prediction period. But if Musk’s friend Donald Trump wins re-election, it might change how some marketers feel about the platform.

Advertisers can go back to (or stay on) X to show Musk they care.

The billionaire will become a leader in Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency. He has promised big cuts to government spending, like Musk did at X. Fortune says that brands like IBM, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Disney are coming back to the platform. The government is keeping an eye on these companies, and they might do better with friends who are close to President Trump.

There are still problems with X ads causing conversions, so companies that go back to X probably won’t spend as much as they did in 2021 and 2022.

X users aren’t always in the mood to shop. According to data from Sprout Social and Cint, only 16% of social media users around the world use the site to find new products. This is compared to 61% of Instagram users and 60% of Facebook users.
Influencer Marketing Hub says that only 5.5% of marketers around the world use X for influencer marketing. This is compared to 58.9% who use TikTok and 35.2% who use Instagram.
According to an EMARKETER report from March 2024, X will only get 0.2% of all digital ad spending around the world in 2025. On the other hand, Facebook will get 14.6% and TikTok/Douyin will get 7.1%.

“Twitter has had a problem for a long time, even before Musk took over. It was never a very good social channel for brands.” Brand safety seemed to get a lot of attention in the news, but Keith Bendes, vice president of strategy and GTM at Linqia, said that one big reason brands haven’t stepped in is because of performance measures and how much better media can be spent on other social platforms. “Brands go where the action is,” Musk said. “Unless Musk can improve the media metrics for advertisers, they will never have a reason to make Twitter a big part of their media strategy.”

Brands that come back to X might not spend as much as they did before because users are still leaving the site.

A March 2024 EMARKETER prediction says that the number of X users around the world will drop by 2.7% to 349.1 million next year.
Bluesky now has 15 million users around the world, up one million in the week after the election.

Since Bluesky doesn’t have ads, it won’t take the place of advertisers even if it replaces some X customers. Marketers may make the site a natural home for their brand, but that doesn’t mean they’ll leave X.

Now that X’s leadership is so linked to the Trump administration, brands will have to decide if staying on the platform or leaving it fits with their brand’s image. People who want to look neutral will either not change their current approach or will quietly start advertising on the platform again. But it’s not likely that spending on ads will go back to where it was.

Source: emarketer