It appears that big advertisers have not yet slammed the door in X’s face, even if their relationship with its owner, Elon Musk, is more drama than deal-making.
How else do you explain the fact that 80 marketers showed up at X’s New York headquarters yesterday (September 17) for another client council session? It’s essentially X’s version of an upfront, where advertisers come to take a look and decide whether the platform is still worth their ad dollars, despite the drama that makes it a risky bet.
“I think there’s a general curiosity among advertisers in general, whether they’re spending or not, to see what X is doing and what developments are happening there,” said Jasmine Enberg, vice president and principal analyst of social media and creator economics at eMarketer. X declined to comment.
According to an advertising executive in the room, top marketing executives from companies such as McDonald’s, FanDuel, Lenovo, the NFL, NBA and WNBA gathered around couches and coffee tables, along with other representatives from several sports leagues and major equity groups.
They listened in the building’s Commons space as CEO Linda Yaccarino, standing on a slightly raised stage, positioned X as an “indispensable platform” for brands to connect with audiences at key cultural moments. That’s been the social network’s signature pitch for years, but Yaccarino underscored it by releasing engagement stats from the Olympics, WNBA games, and the U.S. presidential race. Her message was clear: For all of X’s challenges, it remains a lightning rod for real-time conversations, whether we like it or not. The pitch came wrapped in the usual buzzwords, calling X the “global town square” and promises of “brand safety” that have become the standard script for keeping advertisers on board.
At one point, Yaccarino called the session’s dialogue “essential for us, too,” according to the advertising executive, adding, “We connect with you. We learn from you. We listen to you. And we take your feedback and improve.”
But the new part this time? The introduction of Angela Zepeda, X’s new global head of marketing. After being introduced by her boss, Zepeda used her first public appearance to reinforce the message she’d already laid out. She rattled off stats about rising video views and monthly active minutes on X, and hinted at upcoming features like payouts, hiring updates, and developments with X’s artificial intelligence tool, Grok.
Zepeda was joined by other key members of the X team, including Brett Weitz (chief content officer), Alex Josephson (part of the NEXT Team, which focuses on brand strategy and creative services for advertisers), Sid Rao and Evan Jones (engineering), and Kylie McRoberts and Evan Jones (brand safety). Monique Pintarelli, head of the Americas, wrapped up the morning with an in-depth look at the state of X’s advertising business.
According to the advertising executive, Pintarelli said: “Nearly 90% of our top 100 advertisers in 2023 are currently spending on the platform. Seventy percent of the top 100 are accelerating their spending quarter over quarter, and 50% are accelerating year over year.”
With that, the marketing leaders took a lunch break before heading to breakout sessions in separate rooms across the floor, which covered topics such as “Driving Partner Results,” “Content on X,” “Breakthrough on X with NEXT,” and “Becoming the App for Everything,” said the executive in attendance.
The fact that so many marketers showed up speaks volumes: it shows that the platform has piqued their curiosity, even if it hasn’t locked in their advertising budgets yet.
However, 26% of advertisers are said to be planning to cut ad spend on X next year, according to a Kantar surveyThe survey also found that only 4% of marketers said they thought ads on X were brand-safe, compared to 39% who felt the same way about ads on Google.
Brand safety is often the publicly stated reason why advertising is so terrible on the platform, but it’s not the only issue. If brand safety were the only concern, the biggest names in the advertising industry wouldn’t be gathering to hear X speak. After all, brand safety is a risk on all platforms.
What’s unique, and presumably more distasteful to marketers, is X’s owner, Elon Musk. Many brands don’t want to be seen supporting someone so polarizing, regardless of what they think of his platform.
“Brand safety is a concern for many advertisers, but if there’s one thing that can beat brand safety, it’s ad performance,” Enberg said. “The more X can convince advertisers that their ads are working and that it’s a vital investment for them, the better they’ll be positioned in the end.”
As usual, the event comes at a tense time for advertisers and X. Just last month, X filed a federal antitrust lawsuit against GARM, WFA, CVS Health, Mars, Ørsted, and Unilever. The move forced WFA to shut down GARM entirely. So while advertisers gathered at X headquarters to hear the latest pitch, the ongoing legal battles were hard to ignore. The timing is less than ideal for Yaccarino, but tension has become the norm in X’s fraught relationship with the ad industry.