Twitter, or X, is slashing the prices of its advertising packages. Right now, advertisers can take advantage of 50% discounts for various ad packages on the X platform.
The rebrand has brands worried. The recognisable merit of Larry the Bird is gone, which was pretty important to the integrity of Twitter, or X Corp, and therefore important to the recognition of advertisements on the platform. Elon Musk has been sweetening ad package deals by retweeting (which doesn’t have an X equivalent term yet) paid-for ad campaigns, himself. It gives marketers a boost, but it can’t be applied to every advertiser on the app, or the Musk X profile will be even more swamped than usual.
As Musk told X on July 15th, “We’re still negative in cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.”
That, coupled with questions about Musk’s management of the company, and the resulting atmosphere that regularly puts adverts next to adult or hateful content, has made a lot of advertisers run from the app.
In order to fix this, Musk is offering advertisers “reduced pricing on video ads that run alongside a list of trending topics in X’s ‘Explore’ tab”, according to The Wall Street Journal which was privy to leaked emails. Also offered is 50% off new bookings of those ads until July 31st, and a few extra variations on discounts.
Additionally, the email said that brands are going to start losing their verification status from August 7th. The gold checkmark that confirms that a brand account is the true brand account will be removed if they haven’t spent at least $1,000 on advertising on the X platform in the past 30 days, or $6,000 in the past 180 days.
How does this affect affiliate marketers? Advertising revenue appears to be a clear pursuit for Musk’s X Corp. A 50% discount on ads is attractive – but given the platform’s management and the resulting audience, many are questioning where best to invest.
