Elon Musk pleads with advertisers to come back as Twitter revenue falls

X-former-Twitter is in deep trouble — and owner Elon Musk is on his knees, once again, begging advertisers to come back.

While New York Times reported last week that executives at the beleaguered platform assured employees that 65 percent of advertisers had returned, documents obtained by Bloomberg shows revenue has generally declined since owner Elon Musk took over at the end of 2022.

Now Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino are back in damage control mode, trying to raise some much-needed funds at this year’s Cannes Lions festival in the south of France. The mercurial billionaire reportedly met with executives from the NFL, L’Oreal, Qualcomm and Target, according to a new report by NYT.

But whether these measures will help Musk’s hate speech echo chamber bleed hundreds of millions of dollars a quarter remains to be seen.

After all, who could forget that Musk literally told advertisers to fuck off in November — fighting words that likely didn’t sit well with the executives he’s now begging to return to X.

Responding to questions about his gag during his meltdown at last year’s DealBook Summit, Musk coyly suggested he wasn’t referring to “advertisers as a whole.”

“Advertisers have the right to appear next to content that they feel is compatible with their brands,” said ad giant WPP CEO Mark Read during an interview on Wednesday. “What’s not cool is insisting there can’t be any content they don’t agree with on the platform.”

“I shoot myself in the foot every now and then, but at least you know it’s genuine, not from the PR department,” he admitted.

As BloombergMusk’s latest report shows that Musk’s leadership has been disastrous for the platform. Revenue fell nearly 40% in the first half of 2023 compared to the same period in 2022. The company lost $456 million in the first quarter of 2023 alone.

While it’s unclear where the company stands in 2024, the documents paint a worrying picture of the company’s financials, with Musk repeatedly making headlines for using the platform to perpetuate conspiracy theories, expose racists and spread misinformation.

In other words, it’s not exactly a place where executives are dying to stuff their advertising dollars.

A concrete case, the directors said The age of the ad that they had no interest in listening to Musk and that he had been “antagonistic to the causes and social issues they care about.”

Meanwhile, Musk used the opportunity this week to reassure advertisers that AI — what else? — will once again save the day by making ads more relevant to customers.

“If you’re trying to reach senior decision makers, if you want to reach the most influential people in the world,” Musk told Read, “the X platform is by far the best.”

However, millions of users, especially in the US, continue to leave the platform as bots, scams and spam proliferate, largely unchecked. Musk has also welcomed hate speech with open arms on Twitter, further alienating the platform’s once-sizable user base.

More on Twitter: Elon Musk is demanding money back from the employees he fired