X sets up team to generate $100m from political ads: reports

Elon Musk’s X has created a new team specifically designed to generate advertising revenue for political advertisers.

The goal of this team is to generate $100m in advertising revenue before the 2024 political elections, as reports the Financial Times.

This move has been viewed by critics as a response to advertisers leaving the platform due to a turbulent 2023 for X.

2023: A turbulent year for X and its ad revenue

Major corporations such as Coca-Cola, Disney and Apple did not appreciate the billionaire seeming to endorse an anti-semitic post on X:

You have said the actual truth

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) November 15, 2023

This resulted in advertisers withdrawing from the social media platform. The New York Times estimated this could be $75m worth of advertising revenue lost.

The relationship with advertisers became even more strained when Elon Musk swore and repeatedly berated advertisers who moved off the platform. including Bob Iger, Disney CEO, earlier this year.

Watch my conversation with @ElonMusk: https://t.co/YedkELVhFn

— Andrew Ross Sorkin (@andrewrsorkin) November 29, 2023

In the DealBook interview Musk said that the “advertising boycott..is going to kill the company”, stating that “the whole world will know that those advertizers killed the company”.

Musk then provided a public apology for the tweet, admitting that this was arguably the worst post in his history on the site, and reflected it was one of many ‘foolish’ tweets.

X advertising team

X has hired Sten McGuire, formerly of Hulu and Disney’s political sales departments. The company is also actively recruiting for the political ad sales team’ on LinkedIn.

Revenue has sharply fallen since Elon Musk’s takeover of the social media platform. In October it was estimated X had lost 57% in value from the original $44 billion Musk was forced to pay to purchase the company.

This new team has been formed to claw back the lost advertising investment, however, previous political advertising figures are a stark contrast to the $100m the team hopes to generate.

“During the 2018 midterm elections, X, then known as Twitter, brought in only about $3mn in political advertising. As of December 11, the company had made about $4.7mn from the start of 2023 from political ads, according to disclosure data that can be requested from the company” the Financial Times article states.

This would mean a 95% increase would be required for this new political advertising team to be successful before the 2024 political elections in November 2024.

Image Credit: Mohamed_hassan/Pixabay