• by Wayne Friedman , November 22, 2023

Of nearly 261 companies that spent over $1 million on advertising on X/Twitter from January 2022 to October 2023, 86% of them have reduced ad spending on the platform, according to estimates from MediaRadar.

Brand-safety concerns remain a major problem, according to the advertising research firm.

Top ten advertisers -- including AT&T, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Capital One, Nike, and Bank of America -- have reduced spending by 70% to 97%, according to the report.

AT&T was down 97%, while Coca-Cola was down 96%, and General Motors was down 93%.

Todd Krizelman, chief executive officer/co-founder of MediaRadar, said in a release: “Although there appeared to be progress in addressing these issues, recent developments suggest that X is still facing challenges."

MediaRadar's methodology comes from a review of Twitter’s advertisers' data sample from January 1, 2022 through October 31, 2023, tracking “infeed image, carousel and video ads captured from a panel of over two million U.S. users for Twitter.”

In 2022, X/Twitter totaled $4.1 billion in advertising revenue, according to eMarketer, and this total is projected to drop to $2.9 billion this year.

In 2021, as a public company, then Twitter’s revenue was $4.4 billion ($5.1 billion overall). 

In October 2022, Twitter was bought out and taken private for $44 billion by a group of investors led by Elon Musk.

Some industry projections say that the platform is now worth around $19 billion.