After Elon Musk bought Twitter and changed its name to X, advertisers left in droves due to the harmful and hateful content that Musk allowed to proliferate on the platform. Nothing has changed about the contentāif anything, itās getting worseābut the brands are coming back, according to Bloomberg, because suddenly their money might purchase them some favor with the Trump administration.
Bloomberg, citing data from Emarketer, reported that X is projected to generate $1.31 billion in U.S. advertising sales this year, marking a 17.5% growth from the year prior. Global ad buys are up, too, with X expected to do $2.26 billion in revenue in 2025āa 16.5% uptick. (For what itās worth, that is still well below the $4.46 billion in ad revenue the company generated in 2021, the last year in which it wasnāt entangled with Musk in any way).
The reason for the resurgence of ad sales appears to be tied to Muskās prominent position in the Trump administrationāa fact that can really cut both ways for companies. On one hand, the Trump administration has always come off as quite transactional, so if you put some money in the right coffers, you just might gain some benefit. On the other hand, it can be severely vindictive (particularly Musk, who seems to cast aside anyone over the slightest criticism) and unafraid to use its levers of power to punish.
The latter has clearly already had some impact on advertisers who wanted to be done with X. Earlier this year, the Wall Street Journal reported that X CEO Linda Yaccarino had been hinting to brands that if they donāt start spending money on the platform again, they might face some additional scrutiny from the government. That seems to have workedāadvertiser Interpublic Group, currently trying to complete a merger with Omnicom Group that could face a challenge from the Trump administrationādecided to make a big ad buy on X, per WSJ.
Itās difficult attribute the uptick in ad spends to anything other than favor trading. Itās not as though platform has gotten better since advertisers first started boycotting it. A recent study published in PLOS One found that hate speech increased by 50% following Muskās takeover, with no meaningful reduction in bots or other inauthentic accounts that Musk once railed against as the platformās biggest problem. Meanwhile, the site is losing users, seeing activity drop 22% since Election Day while rivals Threads and Bluesky have seen a jump in activity.
Apparently, having your brand appear between posts denying the Holocaust happened and promoting white supremacy is worth it if it might buy you some goodwill with the administration by enriching the āfirst buddyā of the president.
