More advertisers walk away from Twitter amid Elon Musk’s chaotic landing

More advertisers are choosing to move away from Twitter in the midst of the chaos that the social network has experienced since it was acquired two weeks ago by the billionaire Elon Musk.

Omnicom – one of the largest advertising houses in the world and representing brands such as McDonald’s, Apple or PepsiCo– recommended this Friday to its clients to suspend the purchase of ads on Twitter, joining other rivals that had already done the same.

The decision responds, according to Omnicom, to a series of events in recent days that may have “serious implications for advertisers”, including the layoffs of Twitter’s security teams, the resignation of several senior executives and the proliferation of accounts that use the payment verification system put in place by Musk to impersonate companies or personalities.

This was detailed by the firm in an internal message published today by various US media, in which Omnicon concludes that the risk to its clients’ brands has increased on Twitter to “a level that most consider unacceptable.”

Previously, other giants in the sector had already recommended that their clients temporarily stop advertising on Twitter and several large companies had paralyzed their advertising on the platform, mainly due to the uncertainty surrounding the drift that the social network could take due to the promises of Musk to prioritize free speech over content moderation.

Although the world’s richest man has tried to reassure advertisers and has avoided imposing big changes in moderation for now, the events of the last few days seem to continue to drive advertising, which is his main source of income, away from Twitter.

This week, the most notorious problem has been the explosion in the number of impostor accounts, which have taken advantage of the possibility of obtaining verified status simply by subscribing to the Twitter Blue service to sow confusion on the Internet, according to the Efe news agency.

In most cases, it has been simple pranksters posing as companies or personalities, but the risk to brands is obvious.

This Friday, the pharmacist Eli Lilly It went public after a false profile of its own on Twitter announced that insulin, one of its main products, was becoming free, in a message with a strong impact that forced the company to come out and deny it.

Although the drop was framed in a general bad day for the health sector, the Eli Lilly case illustrated the dangers posed by the new payment verification system, which for only 8 dollars and without any type of control allows access to the blue symbol that for years it distinguished relevant accounts and whose identity had been confirmed.

Faced with repeated impersonation problems, Twitter opted on Friday to suspend the new Twitter Blue and to recover for its advertisers the gray “original” label that it had launched a few days before and, almost immediately, withdrawn by direct order of Musk. .

According to specialized media, one of the dangers for Twitter is that precisely at this time of year, many long-term advertising contracts are negotiated with the largest advertisers, who may choose to go to other platforms.

The Wall Street Journalfor example, today cites an anonymous source linked to a large consumer products company that plans to stop its ads on Twitter at least during the first quarter of next year and move a budget of about 10 million dollars to TikTokservices of streaming y Google.