Thread regarding Twitter layoffs

Pausing Ads

I’ve seen a lot of technical and ideological takes on Elon Twitter but wanted to share the marketing perspective. For background I’m a director at a medium sized b2b tech company (not in finserv anymore) running a team that deploys about $80M in ad spend/year. Twitter was 8-10% of our media mix and we have run cost per engagement (ie download a white paper, register for an event) campaigns successfully since 2016.

I had my team keep our campaigns live for 2 weeks post-takeover on the bet that efficiency would improve with fewer advertisers and the risks were managed and probably overblown. I was wrong and I think the things we saw in these last 2 weeks means many more advertisers will bail on the platform in the coming weeks (for non-ideological or virtue signaling reasons):

  • Performance fell significantly. CPMs didn’t drop but our engagement went way down. Maybe it’s a shift in users on the platform, maybe it’s ad serving related.
  • Serious brand safety issues. Our organic social and CS teams got dozens of screenshots of our ads next to awful content. Replies to our posts with hardcore antisemitism and adult spam remained up for days even when flagged.
  • Our entire account team turned over multiple times in 2 weeks. We had multiple people (AE, AM, analyst, creative specialist) supporting our account and they all vanished without so much as an email. We finally got an email with a name for an AM last week but they quit and we don’t have a new one yet.
  • Ads UI is very buggy and login with SSO and 2FA broken. One of my campaign managers logged in last week and found all our paused creatives from the past 6 years had been reactivated. Campaign changes don’t save. These things cost us real money.
by Anonymous
| 1341 views | | 6 replies (last November 28, 2022) | Reply
Post ID: @OP+1jPjwhmT
Comment! It's anonymous!

6 replies (most recent on top)

"...brand safety issues are just something [advertisers] are going to have to deal with"

...and they are, by leaving the platform. They're voting with their feet.

by Actions meet consequences
| | Reply
Post ID: @6uyo+1jPjwhmT

It's crazy that he planned to fail on purpose like tahta!? You guys nailed it.

Oh wait... he's succeeding instead. Weird.

by Anonymous
| | Reply
Post ID: @4yai+1jPjwhmT
Our organic social and CS teams got dozens of screenshots of our ads next to awful content.

in the 80s it was the satanic panic, in the 90s it was beavis and bu-----d, and in the 2000s it was south park and family guy. you're probably just old.

by Anonymous
| | Reply
Post ID: @1zut+1jPjwhmT

It makes sense that the engagement would drop as the bots get cleaned out but the brand safety issues are just something you’re going to have to deal with as these platforms become more and more decentralized. There is no shortage of profitable brands so the days of advertisers dictating content are coming to an end. If it’s not illegal, it’s going to stay up.

by Anonymous
| | Reply
Post ID: @yuw+1jPjwhmT

It appears the ad revenue stream is dead, or at least very much drying up. He looks to be getting recurring revenue from his $8 subscriptions which personally I think won't happen at the volume he wants. I won't pay it, and most people I know won't, but that's a very small sample.

by Anonymous
| | Reply
Post ID: @rkw+1jPjwhmT

Thank you for this informed insight. One would almost think that Mr Musk is deliberately running this business into the ground, for whatever nefarious reason. Personally, I think this whole sad story is just the Dunning–Kruger effect in horrific action. Yet again.

by Anonymous
| | Reply
Post ID: @oru+1jPjwhmT

Post a reply

: