Some spicy revelations about advertising on Apple, Elon Musk and Twitter

Elon Musk is a hot ass, let’s just say. His takeover of Twitter has certainly cost him on a personal level, so much so that some believe that a potential adversary won’t drag Tesla down the spiral of failure.

But the 44 billion transaction is above all expensive for the company itself: Twitter is now loaded with debt and its huge interests, which is especially difficult to imagine without a rapid increase in the platform’s revenues.

And these largely depend on its advertising revenue. However, as has been widely reported since Musk took the helm, his erratic and brutal attitude, massive and poorly targeted layoffs, and, above all, philosophical indifference to moderating comments on the platform have largely eluded the issue. The biggest advertisers are afraid to associate their brand image with a location hate speech or conspirators are no longer afraid of anything.

While most of these maneuvers take place behind the scenes, a psychodrama has been seriously publicized by Elon Musk himself, who has gone on a crusade against Apple.

According to him, Tim Cook’s firm, which is one of the advertisers that temporarily suspended advertising investments on Twitter, “He was against freedom of speech”. Even worse, Apple threatened to remove Twitter from the AppStore: intolerable spy belli The boss of Tesla or SpaceX, as always, tried to agree with the tweets.

After threatening to launch his own phone, much to the laughter of many observers, he, like many others before him, went to war against the 30% commission charged on transactions through Apple’s services, but after the meeting, things went back to normal. with Tim Cook driving his owner around.

Kim also had to explain to him two or three things that were as basic as they were important, that despite all the wisdom he didn’t often display, he didn’t know about big brand advertising on the Internet.

As the New York Times and Ars Technica have pointed out, Apple’s suspension of Twitter ad orders had nothing to do with violence or an all-out attack. “free speech” dear to Musk.

The decision actually came after a deadly shooting at a gay nightclub in Colorado Springs “business as usual” about a big firm trying to control its brand image at all costs: Apple just wanted its name not associated with mass murder in any way.

Monster sale

A little later, after profusely thanking Apple for the return of its customers, Elon Musk shared another tweet praising advertisers for returning to Twitter – like Apple, Amazon in particular, would promise large campaigns worth $ 100 million a year.

What has changed for brands, or at least some of them, to continue their advertising investments on a platform, but it risks slipping into complete immoderation?

Not necessarily a love of free speech, not necessarily a financial reward for Elon Musk’s genius, but a very good deal for them: according to the New York Times, the new owner has thus offered them financial terms they can’t refuse. Their upcoming campaigns and platform seem like somewhat desperate rug salesman methods.

So, advertising is on sale on Twitter, and Musk offers a huge 50% discount, or rather a 100% bonus: according to the New York daily, the platform offers to double the number of impressions of ads purchased for any ad in December. Campaign between $500,000 and $1 million. Bonuses of 25-50% are offered for lower spend, $200,000 and $350,000 respectively.

The reason for these exceptional offers is simply an exceptional gap: according to the New York Times, the revenue forecast for the World Cup period, which should constitute a lifeline for an already strangled firm, was 80%. below forecast.

By the end of October, the platform had lost a total of 1,500 advertisers for reasons explained above, including some behemoths like Apple. Because of this, sales forecasts continued to be revised downward by the teams in charge, falling from $1.4 billion to $1.1 billion in a few weeks in the final months of the year.

In short: the panic is palpable and the platform continues to be under serious threat. This is all the more true because Musk’s plan to charge $8 a month from users who want to benefit from a small certificate token is ultimately still uncertain: it was, a priori, the most direct source of income that the new boss could imagine. .

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