Twitter is offering free advertising credits, matching adspend up to $250,000.
Why? Twitter hopes to woo big advertisers back to the platform after they jumped ship due to controversies surrounding Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover.
Musk said in November that Twitter had suffered “a massive drop in revenue” and was losing $4 million daily.
Many big brands, including General Mills, Pfizer Inc., United Airlines Holdings Inc., automakers General Motors Co., and Volkswagen AG, have paused their spending on Twitter, partly due to concerns about how Twitter will moderate content.
More than 75 of Twitter’s top 100 ad spenders from before Musk’s takeover weren’t spending on the platform as of the week ending Jan. 8, according to an analysis of data from research firm Sensor Tower.
…And let’s just say that persuading big advertisers to return to Twitter is critical.
Nearly 90% of Twitter’s $5.1 billion in revenue in 2021 came from ads.
This ‘BOGO’ incentive is the latest effort by the social media company to get brands to spend on its platform.
Recently, Twitter offered advertisers $500,000 in free ads as long as they spent at least $500,000.
Ad buyers said that the incentive could be used to buy promoted tweets during Super Bowl week, a key selling period for Twitter. Advertisers have recently flocked to Twitter during the Super Bowl to generate buzz around their big-game marketing efforts. The Super Bowl is Twitter’s biggest revenue day of the year.
For a brand to be eligible for the latest incentive, it must use certain Twitter products, such as its recently released keyword-avoidance tool, which allows advertisers to create a list of up to 1,000 keywords and avoid having their ads appear above or below tweets containing those words.
Musk recently said he expects Twitter to be roughly cash-flow break-even in 2023. He previously had invoked the specter of bankruptcy, saying that Twitter had been on track to post a “negative cash flow of $3 billion a year” before the company slashed costs by cutting thousands of jobs. He said the staff was roughly 2,000 people compared with about 8,000 previously.
So, will the promise of free advertising be enough to draw big brands back onto Twitter? Only time will tell.