Elon Musk Says Twitter Stabilizing But Would Have Been Toast Without Him; Thanks Disney, Apple For Advertising
08.03.2023 - 02:59
/ deadline.com
Elon Musk prodded advertisers “to use Twitter yourselves, and believe what you see on Twitter, not what you read in the newspapers.”
“There’s something about journalists. They have been trained never to write a positive story,” the Twitter, Tesla and SpaceX CEO said at a Morgan Stanley media conference Tuesday. An uptick in hate speech after he took Twitter private last fall spooked some advertisers but others never left, he said, expressing gratitude to Disney and Apple for being long-term partners. “Thank you,” he said.
“Disney is a major advertiser on Twitter, one of our biggest advertisers. Apple is one of our biggest advertisers. Disney, of course, does not want to have its ads next to things that are not appropriate for a family audience,” Musk said. “But there are [other] products that are more R-rated. Advertisers can actually adjust [ads to] what content they are comfortable having. The same is true on TV. The advertising you’re seeing at 7 pm is not the same you’re seeing at midnight. It’s up to the advertiser where they want to put their content.”
Warner Bros. Discovery is also aboard as Musk noted a campaign for HBO’s The White Lotus. “I was talking to [WBD CEO] David Zaslav, he’s great, and he said, ‘Why can’t we put a White Lotus trailer every time someone mentions White Lotus on Twitter?’ And I was like, ‘Absolutely.’ One of the super obvious but profound things we are doing is keyword advertising…You don’t need advanced AI for this one.”
“The most important thing is that the advertising is effective, that it is relevant and that it moves the needle for a company.”
The broader media sector also happens to be is the midst of an ad slump triggered by recession fears.
Usage and engagement on Twitter have