Stable genius Elon Musk has been bragging that Apple and Amazon are advertising on Twitter once again after he repeatedly threatened to name and shame advertisers who don't want anything to do with Twitter's toxic stew of QAnon, Nazism, and Musk's cringeworthy attempts to be funny.
But The Wall Street Journal reports that ad revenue isn't as rosy as Galaxy Brain would like you to think:
Earlier this month the New York Times reported that as of October, Twitter's roster of advertisers had fallen nearly 42% since May. Similarweb's data paint an even worse picture: Activity on Twitter's ad manager, a subdomain of Twitter's ad platform sites that specifically hosts those creating or monitoring ad campaigns, declined nearly 74% in October from a year earlier, according to the firm's data. In November, visits fell 85% on the same basis—the largest ad traffic decline since Twitter's change of hands.
In desperation, Twitter has discounted its ad rates by half (compared to Facebook, which has dropped ad rates by 18%). Musk seems to think he can make up for the devastating shortfall with revenue from users who are willing to pay $8 a month ($11 for iPhone owners) to get better seats to his dumpster fire. Sounds like a winning plan!