Washington, United States
Elon Musk promised advertisers to protect his new purchase, Twitter from becoming a 'free-for-all hellscape."
The advertising companies have started to show concern over Musk's leadership of how he will deal with spreading false information and hate.
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The issues of misinformation and hate began over Musk's tweet about the attack on Paul Pelosi. Other issues include him increasing the cost of a Twitter subscription and considering half as many advertisements. It is difficult for advertisers to reach out to someone for contact as many top advertising and sales officials have reigned after Musk's takeover.
With being CEO for one week, Elon musk is already under great pressure to assure advertisers that the microblogging platform will generate over $5 billion every year, after talking about his dislike for ads in 2019.
Media buyers told Reuters that they'd not meet Musk until he gives a clear direction for Twitter to function and what benefits the advertisers will be getting. Another media buyer said that it had already started to free its ad spending on Twitter due to concerns over content abuse.
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One such is IPG. A source familiar with the advertising company said that the firm has instructed its clients like Coca-Cola to suspend its advertisement on Twitter.
To get a clear vision of users, Musk on Wednesday (October 2), polled on what the advertisers support, free speech or political provocations. In the poll over 80 per cent of them chose free speech.
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Allie Wassum, global director of social and integrated media for the Jordan shoe brand on Lidlekn posted, "Unless Elon hires new leaders committed to keeping this 'free' platform safe from hate speech, it's not a platform brand can/should advertise on."
The turmoil regarding Twitter has risen over a period of time, especially after the Twitter deal was finalised. It's getting difficult for Musk to manage with advertisers as the ads generate over 90 per cent of the company's revenue along with so many of the existing staff resigning, prompting Musk to pull employees from his companies like Tesla, and Neuralink to join Twitter.
(With inputs from agencies)
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