• by Colin Kirkland , November 27, 2024

In an attempt to onboard more paying users, X has begun running full-screen promotions for its Premium account offerings, including a new offer that promises to match Shopify merchants' ad spend this holiday season.

“Speak with an X Ads Specialist to earn a 100% match on your ad spend for 30 days, up to $100k USD,” one of the promotions reads. “Must be a Shopify seller in the US or Canada to participate.”

The generous offer, which the social media company says will run through December 1 and requires advertisers to commit to a certain level of X ad spend, is likely the reaction to a substantial lack of advertisers and ad revenue on X.

Under the ownership of Elon Musk, the platform, previously known as Twitter, is still trying to recover from the loss of a majority of its top ad partners after X slashed its traditional content moderation oversight, replacing it with Community Notes, which has failed to make a substantial impact on protecting brands and users from the proliferation of offensive and harmful content.

Since Musk's takeover in 2022, the platform's ad revenue is down around 80%, and last month, Kantar reported that 26% of marketers across the globe are planning to decrease their ad spend on X in the coming year.

Furthermore, a report by The New York Times from July cites internal documents from X that show the company earning $114 million in revenue in the U.S. in the second quarter of this year, marking a 25% decline from Q1 and a 53% decline year-over-year.

However, while Musk's recent alliance with president-elect Donald Trump has pushed users to sign-up for competing microblogging social platforms like Threads and Bluesky, the development may sway some major advertisers to return to the app, attempting to align themselves with a new, more politically conservative audience.

In addition, X's full-screen in-app promotions for Premium -- which offer users a 40% discount on the subscription for a limited time -- exemplify a new trend this holiday season of leading social platforms running promotions for their own services and products.

Meta, for example, is using its ad space to run top-of-feed promotions for its own Meta Quest VR headsets on both Facebook and Instagram to persuade more users to adopt its long-term metaverse ambitions. Snapchat, too, is running promotions for Snapchat+ directly in its users' inboxes.