During a Twitter Space this evening, Elon Musk confirmed that Apple has “fully resumed advertising” on Twitter. This comes less than a week after Musk publicly shamed Apple for having “mostly stopped advertising on Twitter” and questioned if the company hated “free speech in America.”
Apple never confirmed nor denied that it had stopped advertising on Twitter. There was also never any indication of whether a slowdown in advertising was due to Musk’s ownership of Twitter or just a general realignment at the end of the month.
Musk visited Apple Park on Wednesday to meet with Tim Cook. The meeting seemingly went well, with Musk noting that Cook said Apple had never planned to remove Twitter from the App Store.
Top comment by jgibson2400
Honesty is not Musk's strong suit, so who knows if it's true or not?
But let's pretend this is a rare case where he isn't being dishonest - what is fully resuming advertising on Twitter equate to?
In a 9to5Mac post on Nov 28 it references an internal document showing that Apple spent $48m on Twitter in Q1.
This article has a weekly spend of 220k the week before Musk closed Twitter and 131k Nov 16 to the 22.
If they've returned to 220k a week, that is less than 3m per quarter - a far cry from $48m in Q1.
During this evening’s Twitter Spaces event, Musk confirmed that Apple has once again ramped up its advertising on Twitter. “Apple has fully resumed advertising on Twitter,” Musk said. He also said that Apple is Twitter’s largest advertiser, hence why it is an important relationship for the company to maintain as other advertisers pause their spending.
Musk’s comments today come after a report from the Washington Post earlier this week indicated that Apple “spent an estimated $131,600 on Twitter ads between Nov. 10 and Nov. 16, down from $220,800 between Oct. 16 and Oct. 22, the week before Musk closed the Twitter.”
Apple, of course, doesn’t publicly disclose any of its advertising spend information. There’s no way to know whether the company legitimately did stop buying ads on Twitter because of Elon Musk. Ad spending ebbs and flows throughout the year, and Apple is notoriously strict with its budgets.
So, I guess we can close this chapter of “Elon Musk’s series of questionable events since acquiring Twitter.” Any guesses as to what’s on the docket for next week? I’m sure there will be something…
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