General Mills and Mondelez International are among a handful of high-profile companies reported to be pausing their advertising on Twitter over concerns that objectionable content may return to the site now that Elon Musk owns the social media platform.
“We have paused advertising on Twitter,” a spokesperson for General Mills told CNN. Separately, the Wall Street Journal was told by the cereal maker, “We will continue to monitor this new direction and evaluate our marketing spend.”
Mondelez wasn’t quoted anywhere we could find but several media reported the snack company was among the advertisers taking a wait-and-see attitude toward the new management of Twitter. Admittedly, some of the others were car companies – General Motors and Volkswagen Group -- making them competitors to Musk’s Tesla.
CNN reported Interpublic Group, a global buyer of advertising for clients that include Unilever and Coca Cola, recommended its clients pause advertising on the platform.
Musk has fired some of Twitter’s top management and others have left voluntarily. He has made statements that more controversial speakers, such as former President Trump, should be allowed back on the platform. Some fear that if Musk scales back content oversight, through policy or through employee attrition, objectionable content could flood the platform -- and appear with your ads.
In a tweet, Musk acknowledged the advertising loss: “Twitter has had a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists.”
