In the nearly two years since Elon Musk bought the social media platform X, many major brands have opted to avoid showing their ads on the site altogether. Other advertisers are ending up on the platform without realizing it.
Two advertisers said they were surprised to learn that ads for their businesses were running on X after Marketing Brew saw the ads and reached out to them. The ads ended up on the platform thanks to a partnership between X and Google, announced last fall, that places some Google ads on X’s main feed.
They’re easy to spot—the ads don’t contain the typical Like and Repost options that appear below other posts and advertisements on the platform.
In the span of about 10 days, Marketing Brew saw these types of ads for several companies running within X’s For You feed. Users have said the ads on the platform formerly known as Twitter stick out like a sore thumb—and their placement has caused some confusion from advertisers who aren’t big on the platform.
“We haven’t logged into Twitter in years,” said Derek-Jon Flagge, the son of the owners of Old World Pizza Truck, a catering company based in Connecticut, which had ads show up on X in July. “I totally forgot we even had a Twitter.”
Opting out
Google’s ad tools bid and serve ads based on certain advertiser criteria across platforms, including on X. If advertisers don’t want to run on certain publishers, they have to opt out, according to Google spokesperson Michael Aciman.
“We share where ads appear in an advertiser’s campaign placement reports and we offer a number of ways for advertisers to adjust their preferences, including excluding websites or apps entirely,” Aciman said in an emailed statement.
That may come as news to some advertisers. Old World Pizza Truck uses Google ads, but Flagge told Marketing Brew that the company didn’t intend to advertise on X. Flagge, who is a photojournalist, said he was especially frustrated by the cropping of the photo in the ad.
“It is super cropped wrong,” he said. “At least make the picture right.”
In July, Marketing Brew saw an ad for Mercury Jets, a subsidiary of Florida-based air charter company Monarch Air Group, running on X. David Gitman, CEO of Monarch Air Group, told Marketing Brew that the company was running ads for Mercury Jets through Google, and that he, like Old World Pizza Truck, didn’t intend to advertise on the platform.
Many major advertisers have steered clear of the platform since Musk purchased the company on October 28, 2022, with some citing concerns over brand safety. Ad spend on the platform was down 73% in June compared to October 2022 levels, and 73 of the 100 top-spending US advertisers in October 2022 were not advertising on the platform as of June, according to SensorTower estimates.
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Reports of challenges for advertisers on the site have continued. Earlier this summer, an NBC News investigation found ads on the platform running alongside controversial content like search results for the hashtag #whitepower. In early July, Musk said in a post on X that the company would take legal action “against the perpetrators and collaborators in the advertising boycott racket,” echoing a right-wing talking point claiming that brand safety standards tend to demonetize right-wing media.
For some advertisers, Musk’s penchant for controversy—as well as the heated discussions that often occur on X itself—are reasons enough to stay away.
“I don’t want us affiliated with anything related to politics or religion…and I don’t want us related to anything extremist,” Flagge said. “I find that [Musk] has pretty extremist views.” Beyond that, though, he says he doesn’t believe many of the truck’s customers are on X, anyway.
Gitman, of Monarch Air Group, concurred. “We probably don’t want to advertise too much with them, because it’s mostly a platform for political discussions,” he said. “If you’re there to discuss politics, and our business is not affiliated with politics…It’s not the best thing for us.”
A “little out of place”
Though it’s hard to get a sense of X’s current advertising policies, it appears that the ads for both Old World Pizza Truck and Mercury Jets weren’t connected to specific profiles, though both ads feature the blue check required to advertise on X. While Old World Pizza does have an X account, it isn’t verified, and it hasn’t posted in more than a decade.
An email to X’s press inbox was met with the reply, “Busy now, please check back later.”
Jack Johnston, senior social innovation director at performance marketing firm Tinuiti, told Marketing Brew that a few of his clients had bought X ads through Google but at such a small scale that it was hard to gauge performance. Aesthetically, he described the ads as being a “little out of place” on the platform.
Meanwhile, the conversation about advertising on X has shifted. Musk’s personal brand, he said, is turning some advertisers away even more than the content of the platform itself.
“The conversation is not necessarily about brand safety or anything that advertisers have control over. It’s more political: Certain leadership on the client side feel like they don’t want to invest because it aligns with Elon,” he said. “That’s most of the conversation that we’re having when we bring it up.”
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