In April, I sat down with Musk for the first of his many chaotic interviews about his acquisition of X.
He said something that, in hindsight, was rather revealing, but which passed me by at the time.
Talking about advertising, he said: “If Disney feels comfortable advertising children’s movies [on Twitter], and Apple feels comfortable advertising iPhones, those are good indicators that Twitter is a good place to advertise.”
Seven months later, Disney and Apple are no longer advertising on X – and Musk is telling companies that have left to “Go [expletive] yourself.”
The companies paused adverts after an investigation by a US organisation, Media Matters for America, flagged ads appearing next to pro-Nazi posts. X fiercely challenged the report, questioning its research methods, and launched a lawsuit against the organisation.
In a fiery interview on Wednesday, Musk also used the “b” word – bankruptcy, in a sign of just how much the ad boycott is damaging the company’s bottom line.
For a company he bought for $44bn (£35bn) last year, bankruptcy might sound unthinkable. But it is possible.
To understand why, you have to look at how reliant X is on advertising revenue – and why advertisers are not coming back.
Although we don’t have the latest figures, last year around 90% of X’s revenue was from advertising. It is the heart of the business.
On Wednesday Musk more than hinted at this.
“If the company fails… it will fail because of an advertiser boycott. And that will be what bankrupts the company.” he said.
Mark Gay, chief client officer at marketing consultancy at Ebiquity, which works with hundreds of companies, says there is no sign anyone is returning.
“The money has come out and nobody is putting a strategy in place for reinvesting there,” he says.
On Friday, retail giant Walmart announced it was no longer advertising on X.
After Musk had told advertisers who quit X where to go in Wednesday’s interview at the New York Times DealBook Summit, he said something that made advertisers wince even harder.
“Hi Bob”, he said – a reference to the chief executive of Disney, Bob Iger.
When Musk puts chief executives “in his crosshairs” like this they will be even more reticent to be involved with X, says Lou Paskalis, of marketing consultancy AJL Advisory.
Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Insider Intelligence, adds: “It doesn’t take a social media expert to understand and to know that publicly and personally attacking advertisers and companies that pay X’s bills is not going to be good for business.”
