X Could Lose a Whole Lot More Than It's Saying: NYT

'New York Times' cites documents showing up to $75M is at risk through end of year
By Evann Gastaldo,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 25, 2023 6:00 AM CST
X Could Lose a Whole Lot More Than It's Saying: NYT
FILE - A view of a laptop shows the Twitter sign-in page with their the new logo, in Belgrade, Serbia, Monday, July 24, 2023.   (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic, File)

The fallout continues from Elon Musk's endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy theory, and according to internal documents seen by the New York Times, the social network could lose up to $75 million by the end of the year due to advertisers abandoning the platform (though X pushed back on that idea). Shortly after Musk's post, Media Matters published a report showing ads on X appearing alongside white nationalist and Nazi content. Amid both of those controversies, big-name advertisers including IBM, Disney, Apple, Paramount, NBCUniversal, Comcast, Lionsgate, and Warner Bros. Discovery suspended their advertising campaigns on the platform. But the documents shown to the Times reveal the damage is a lot worse than that, and that "dozens of major brands" have paused their campaigns.

The documents list more than 100 brands that have "fully paused" their ads and lists dozens more as "at risk"; companies listed include Airbnb, Amazon, Coca-Cola, Jack in the Box, Microsoft, Netflix, and Uber. Not all of them stopped entirely: Uber, for example, cut back $800,000 worth of ads, while Netflix paused almost $3 million worth. CNN also recently listed brands that had paused advertising on X, including Fox Sports, Ubisoft, Axios, TechCrunch, and Paris Hilton's 11:11 Media. The official word from X in a Friday statement was that $11 million in revenue was at risk, and when the Times came out with its much higher number, the company told the newspaper it either viewed outdated documents or documents that were simply an "internal exercise to evaluate total risk." Meanwhile, NBC News reports, Musk is digging deeper on his controversial views, and some conservatives are supporting him and X. (More Twitter stories.)

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