According to this recent CNN report, market research firm Kantar found that 26 percent of marketers plan to decrease their spending on X in 2025, claiming that this is “the biggest recorded pullback from any major global ad platform.” The reasons for this, if indeed the Kantar report proves accurate (we won’t see the actual percentage until next year) could as much be because of the man behind the helm of X now, Elon Musk, as it could be an overall shift in how advertising is done mid-decade, as it could be the cyclic overall decline of one social media platform losing popularity in the face of new ones coming along.
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Lots of folks though, think it all trickles down from Mr. Musk.
Twitter takes a Musking
Surely, Elon Musk’s $44 billion takeover of Twitter two years ago had many predicting a change in X’s content and intent. Starting off by telling advertisers to “go fuck themselves” in 2023, when hearing complaints from those advertisers of him running their adds along content they disagreed with, Musk had to surf further objections that advertisers were displeased seeing their paid marketing set against, what they deemed objectional content. IBM, Disney, and Paramount pulled X adds over what these companies' deemed antisemitism and hate speech on the social media platform, while Musk actually endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
He later apologized for doing so.
As a man already suspect because of his mass wealth, high media profile, and seeming to align himself with some controversial conspiracies, Musk hardly engenders benign reactions, for or against his doings. So, of course, X would see some blowback.
It is interesting to note, though, that Kanta reports that consumers felt more positive about ads on X simply because, since Musk took over, there have been fewer ads on the platform than there used to be.
What the adults of adult are saying
Rubbing people the wrong way when your business is to prompt people to ‘rub,’ the adult industry took to Twitter with brush-fire interest. But how do adult content studios, cam girls, amateur naughty content makers, mistresses, and sex toy stores, certainly all that advertise across X, feel about presently playing with Musk?
Certainly, X wants adult content producers.
At the start of summer, X updated its policies concerning adult content, explicitly permitting “consensually produced and distributed adult nudity or sexual behavior” as long as it’s properly labeled at the time it’s shared. But even with this seeming welcome, what do adult content creators feel about X presently? Are they suspicious of Musk and X even while they use the platform to advertise and promote? Are more and more adult content producers pulling off the site?
“I haven’t seen it in adult, but of course, I don’t see everything, so it very well may be happening,” Bruce Friedman of Adult Site Broker says of what he observes of the people who come to him to as much buy as sell adult websites, affiliates, and companies, “I understand this is what’s been happening in the mainstream world, more so than in our space.”
Ariel Anderssen, author, and veteran, multiple award-winning, British BDSM model weighs in with: “I still find X good for advertising, for the simple reason is that it is the only place left that’s still sufficiently sex-worker friendly, that there’s even any point in even trying. So, it’s not like X is good, it’s just that everywhere else is impossibly hostile.”
As far as changes to the platform, Ariel adds, “For me, there haven’t been any changes specific to advertising. There are probably the same criticisms everyone has; it does feel a bit of an unfriendly experience generally. But honestly, I’m just grateful that they still allow, adult profiles.”
And the “desert-loving MILF” adult star Bree Austin says, “It has taken a tremendous decline since the Musk takeover. Interactions within posting, trying to grow fans, the reason that so many of us have started to build out other forms of social media is due to the suppression. If Twitter would open the gates like it used to be, you wouldn’t see so much migration to different social platforms to draw in more fans.”
In the end, it might be less what Musk allows on X or even his obvious political leanings, but that he is, in the one word CNN uses best to describe the man “unpredictable,” and as they go on to state, “it’s difficult to feel confident about your brand safety in that environment.”
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