In April, a delusional Elon Musk said "almost all advertisers have come back" to Twitter. Cut to two months later, and Twitter showed that its U.S. ad sales from April 1—early May plunged, down 59% from the same time last year, reports The New York Times. And this downward Twitter trend isn't going away anytime soon, according to the company, which predicts a 56% drop in ad revenue every week this month compared to June 2022 figures. Hate speech doesn't seem to be working out so well for Musk's social media platform.
From The New York Times:
Twitter's U.S. advertising revenue for the five weeks from April 1 to the first week of May was $88 million, down 59 percent from a year earlier … The company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30 percent, the document said.
Twitter's ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be spooked by a rise in hate speech and pornography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the people said.
These issues will soon be inherited by Linda Yaccarino, the NBCUniversal executive whom Mr. Musk named Twitter's chief executive last month. She is expected to start the job on Monday, four people familiar with the situation said.
Mr. Musk has said Twitter was on track to post $3 billion in revenue in 2023, down from $5.1 billion in 2021, when it was a public company.
Twitter's valuation has since plunged. In March, Mr. Musk said the company was worth $20 billion, down more than 50 percent from the $44 billion he paid for it. Last week, the mutual funds giant Fidelity, which owns shares in Twitter, valued the company at $15 billion.
Seven past and present employees of Twitter have said it's unlikely the company will reverse its catastrophic nose-dive anytime soon.
