• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, October 4, 2023

X Corp. may have aspirations of transforming its microblog formerly known as Twitter into the "everything app," but one thing it has a lot less of since Elon Musk acquired it, is share of social media ad spending.

Twitter/X's share has dwindled to 5% of U.S. ad spending compiled by Guideline from actual invoiced media buys processed by the major agency holding companies and big independent media agencies.

That's down from 12% in the period preceding Musk's reign, which closed Oct. 27, 2022.

While the analysis doesn't provide absolute dollar values, the share of social ad market data reinforces Musk's own disclosures that Twitter's ad revenues have declined by more than half during his reign.

Musk has famously picked a fight with the Anti Defamation League (ADL), which he blamed for putting public pressure by criticizing his decisions to re-platform banned hate speech accounts, and for savaging Twitter's content moderation team, creating a more toxic environment that many national brands and agencies have cut back or withdrawn from completely.

It should be noted that Guideline's data is more reflective of big national brands and doesn't necessarily represent the ad spending patterns of small and medium size businesses.

While Twitter/X has had the most precipitous fall in terms of share of social media ad spending among big U.S. advertisers and agencies, the trend data also shows some interesting overall share patterns, including the rise of TikTok as a social media advertising source.