Waylaid by a boycott by major brands that prompted owner Elon Musk to tell advertisers to “go f— yourself,” X is shifting its focus to small- and mid-sized businesses to prop up its flailing ad business.
“Small and medium businesses are a very significant engine that we have definitely underplayed for a long time,” the company said in a post Friday. “It [was] always part of the plan — now we will go even further with it.”
The change in strategy comes after IBM Corp.
IBM,
Walt Disney Co.
DIS,
Apple Inc.
AAPL,
and others paused spending last week following Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic post. Musk, in a shambolic interview Wednesday at the New York Times’ DealBook summit, accused advertisers of “blackmail” and said they were “going to kill” X.
He repeatedly told the boycotting companies to “go f—” themselves.
Read more: Elon Musk lashes out at advertisers who boycott X: ‘Go f— yourself’
On Friday, Musk further blasted Disney for advertising on TikTok, among others.
Already bleeding large advertisers, X has doubled down on investments to facilitate ad spending by smaller players.
Market researcher MediaRadar’s analysis of X’s U.S. ad spending from January to October 2023 shows a majority of advertisers on X are already smaller businesses.
Of approximately 15,700 advertisers, 79% spent less than $25,000, and 91% of X’s total ad revenue comes from companies spending $99,000 or less, according to MediaRadar.
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