Twitter Inc. offers new incentives for advertisers in an attempt to bring brands back to the social media platform, where the advertising business has suffered since Elon Musk’s $44 billion acquisition.
The tech company is offering free ad space by offering to match advertisers’ ad spend up to $250,000, according to emails reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. The entire $500,000 promo will air on February 28, according to the emails. Twitter did not respond to a request for comment.
Incentives are the company’s latest attempt to entice brands to spend on their platform. Recently, Twitter offered advertisers $500,000 in free advertising provided they spent at least $500,000.
Ad Buyers say the offer can be used to purchase sponsored tweets that air during Super Bowl week, Twitter’s key selling point. In recent years, advertisers have flocked to Twitter during the Super Bowl to create buzz around their big-game marketing efforts. The magazine reported that the Super Bowl was Twitter’s highest-earning day of the year.
Twitter is facing financial pressure to attract many advertisers that have stopped spending since Musk bought the company in late October. Advertisers fled largely because they feared what they said was Mr. Musk’s approach to content moderation and worried that their ads might appear near controversial content.
Mr. Musk said in November that Twitter had suffered a “massive drop in revenue” and lost $4 million a day.
Many major brands, including pharmaceutical companies Pfizer Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc, automaker General Motors Co., and Volkswagen AG have stopped spending on Twitter. on the platform as of the weekend of January 8, according to data analysis from a research firm Detection Tower.
It’s important to convince advertisers to come back to Twitter. Nearly 90% of Twitter’s $5.1 billion in revenue in 2021 comes from advertising.
To qualify for modern promotions, brands must use certain Twitter products, such as the recently launched Keyword Avoidance Tool, which allows advertisers to create lists of up to 1,000 keywords and avoid displaying ads above them. Or under tweets containing those words.
Last month, Musk said he believes Twitter will break even on a cash flow basis in about 2023. Earlier he mentioned the specter of bankruptcy.
Musk said Twitter was posting a negative cash flow of $3 billion per year before the company cut costs. He said the workforce had increased to about 2,000 from about 8,000 previously.
