It is widely known that X,
formerly known as Twitter, has experienced a major decline in ad
rates and advertisers on the platform under billionaire Elon Musk’s ownership, but it is now becoming clear that the microblogging app has also suffered losses in app downloads and
user engagement.
According to data collected by Similarweb and Sensor Tower and reported on by Axios, X’s app downloads fell about 38% across the globe over the last year, with mobile
app downloads falling 57% between October 2022 and September 2023.
Axios says numbers from Data.AI, another app tracking firm, also show
engagement metrics down across the board.
Global usage on Android fell almost 15%, with U.S. mobile usage falling almost 18% compared to September 2022. In the third quarter of 2023, average
daily time spent per user on X also dropped 2% year-over-year across the globe.
In addition, the users who stopped using the app under
Musk’s reign increased over 30%, with web traffic down 7% globally and 11.6% in the U.S. for the first nine months of 2023.
While other social networks have also experienced a drop in
usage and engagement over the past year, the trend on X appears to be much worse, whereas some apps have actually increased their traffic, like TikTok, which saw a 22.8% year-over-year boost in
September.
TikTok is also experiencing the fastest year-over-year growth in ad rates, with a 12.28% increase in CPM in 2023 compared to 2022, and a 90% increase in CPMs since 2021, according
to data provided by Gupta Media.
Comparably, X’s advertising rates have plunged 78% since the platform was purchased by Musk in April
2022, dropping as low as $0.32 CPM in August 2023, which marks a three-year-low.
Insider Intelligence estimates that X’s ad business will only bring in $2.9 billion in 2023, compared to
over $4 billion in 2022.