Musk’s X closes $100 mn promoted accounts ad biz: Report

Elon Musk-owned X has shut down $100 million worth promoted accounts ad business on its platform

San Francisco: Elon Musk-owned X (formerly Twitter) has shut down $100 million worth promoted accounts ad business on its platform, and will not allow advertisers to promote their accounts within the platform’s timeline to attract new followers, reports said on Tuesday.

According to an email to advertising clients seen by Axios, the company said it planned to start “depreciating the Followers objective” ad unit beginning as soon as last Friday’.

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The change “comes as part of a larger effort to optimise the X experience by prioritising content formats.” Promoted accounts or “Follower Objective” ads generate more than $100 million annually in global revenue for X, the report informed.

Promoted accounts are one of the oldest ad formats offered on the platform. The ads appear as text-based posts within the X timeline and include a “Follow” button for the account promoting them. Several advertisers rely on promoted follower ads to grow their businesses.

Follower objective ad units also allowed marketers to target potential audiences with more precision than they could through organic tweets, the report mentioned. The implication is that X seeks to nudge advertisers towards more multimedia rich ad styles.

Meanwhile, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said last week that the company is at the verge of breaking even, after it went through a massive churn in the last few months including huge layoffs and platform changes. In her first TV interview since she took over as X Corp CEO, Yaccarino said: “I’ve been at the company for eight weeks. The operational run rate right now we’re pretty close to break even”.

“Our data licensing and API with X is an incredible business. Our new subscription business is growing,” Yaccarino added.