My partner's ecommerce business spends millions a year on marketing and is typical of the type of SME that represents the bulk of total advertising spend.
Twitter/X has always been a far distant third to Meta and Google. It's targeting performance is poor, return on ad spend poor and the capabilities of the ad platform poor. Maybe for some niches e.g. AI startup it was useful but for most SME it was useless and their percentage of overall ad spend reflects this.
For large brands what it was good for was brand awareness. Nothing makes you appear relevant than being alongside the latest trends or news which Twitter excelled it. Which is why when their ads appeared alongside hate speech they were so quick to move. Because they didn't have any real money being generated with them anyway.
You can't put the Elon BS aside because it continually impacts the efficacy of ads on the X/Twitter.
A larger percentage of the ads are scams surrounding trends like NFTs because of his dictated moderation and staffing changes.
Views are amplified for himself and his preferred posters - which for all you know may land your company's logo next to Alex Jones.
> Putting all of the Elon BS aside. Can someone in marketing shine some light on how does X compare to other platforms?
Brand/PR/Reputation is a liability and most big enterprises will continue to optimize for diminishing liabilities by moving to more reliable platforms.
IIRC Twitter charges a fair bit more per impression than IG/FB/etc. (like $3 vs $.50?) but they also average higher engagement/click-through's than their contemporaries, like 10-15x (again if memory serves). It's been a while since I looked at these stats though.
What I don't recall is the amount of ads flowing on each site. I do believe facebook generally has more ads happening than the rest.
The thing is you can't put it aside. People are leaving in droves, as are advertisers. At this point brands don't want to even be on X, much less advertise there. That compares _badly_ to other platforms, needless to say.
I was chatting with someone recently who is still on Xitter and he was wondering why so many of his followers had recently been "suspended". I got to wondering: if a lot of people are leaving and X doesn't want that to be something the remaining people focus on are they just calling people who have deleted their accounts "suspended"?
I stopped posting to Twitter some time last year but most of the people I follow on Twitter/X are still active and haven't moved. It is still the biggest platform compared to any of the alternatives (Mastodon/Bluesky) and despite the downward spiral it will be with us for a long time (just like Facebook).
I am not and have never been on Twitter so I can't speak for what's happening on the platform but the places I frequent that post news that's broken on Twitter haven't stopped doing that so, at the very least, influential people are still breaking news there at the same place.
I can't help but think that the people leaving Twitter meme is wishful thinking by people who dislike Musk.
I sure wish they were. I think that's exactly why for this brief moment the GP wants to focus more on he business realities than the same drama that's happened for the past 6 months.
Twitter/X seems to have good engagement and there are active Geopolitics, Israeli/Zionist, Palestinian/Muslim, Russian, Ukrainian (NAFO), Covid, anti-MSM, anti-Disinfo, populist, Crypto/NFT, Black American, sports, and many Indian and African spaces on an ongoing regular basis, several running concurrently at many times of the day. I like that I can go into multiple spaces at different times and hear radically different perspectives unfiltered. This is why the platform appears to be getting much more sticky.
The Spaces bug where you can't hear people is the most annoying thing about it, other than the link interception.
I'm bothered by the 3 levels of subscription - the basic, premium and premium+. The premium still has ads everywhere, and the + does not, but costs more. I think both should be ad-free. I hate ads particularly when I am already paying for the service!
https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/x-premium#tbpricing-byco...
Given that Premium users are supposed to see 50% less ads, I cannot imagine what kind of ad hellscape it would be if I was not at premium level. I block every ad X account I see.
It is a good place for breaking news and unfiltered data. There is still weaponization of the CommunityNotes, and active shilling and astroturfing by intelligence agencies doing propaganda online.
I have not used Grok at all so I cannot comment there
Twitter/X hasn't traditionally been cheaper than other brand-awareness ad spends, and has performed worse. The best argument for Twitter/X was always that the audience size mattered less than the audience influence.
This is why the abandonment of Twitter/X by large audience segments has been such a compounding effect. Even if they can replace 1:1 people they're losing with new users, if the users aren't the right type of demographic, ad spend is going to collapse.
It will depend on what you are looking to get out of advertising - immediate sales or engagement/awareness.
If you are an eCommerce business selling a widget then you can easily get a cost per conversion, and then it's pretty easy to optimise your spend to maximise profits (i.e. If I spend $30 on ads, I can sell a product I buy for $40 for $90 making $20). I've seen businesses with this revenue model who will spend the equivalent of c.30-40% of revenue to get the sales due to the high margins often involved.
Your conversion will depend a lot on your product, target market, the ad etc (if you are selling a business rolodex your CPC might be better on linkedin, if you are selling a selfie-stick your CPC might be better on insta etc).
The effectiveness of advertising for engagement/brand awareness is much softer, and the spend will be much more discretionary as it is harder to track. It's these ads which are more likely to fall away IMO.
threeseed|2 years ago
Twitter/X has always been a far distant third to Meta and Google. It's targeting performance is poor, return on ad spend poor and the capabilities of the ad platform poor. Maybe for some niches e.g. AI startup it was useful but for most SME it was useless and their percentage of overall ad spend reflects this.
For large brands what it was good for was brand awareness. Nothing makes you appear relevant than being alongside the latest trends or news which Twitter excelled it. Which is why when their ads appeared alongside hate speech they were so quick to move. Because they didn't have any real money being generated with them anyway.
tmpz22|2 years ago
A larger percentage of the ads are scams surrounding trends like NFTs because of his dictated moderation and staffing changes.
Views are amplified for himself and his preferred posters - which for all you know may land your company's logo next to Alex Jones.
> Putting all of the Elon BS aside. Can someone in marketing shine some light on how does X compare to other platforms?
Brand/PR/Reputation is a liability and most big enterprises will continue to optimize for diminishing liabilities by moving to more reliable platforms.
s1artibartfast|2 years ago
It doesn't mean you have to ignore it or say it doesn't exist.
You can ask what else can be said about X besides the given topic that you are putting aside.
Forgeties79|2 years ago
What I don't recall is the amount of ads flowing on each site. I do believe facebook generally has more ads happening than the rest.
Veuxdo|2 years ago
UncleOxidant|2 years ago
I was chatting with someone recently who is still on Xitter and he was wondering why so many of his followers had recently been "suspended". I got to wondering: if a lot of people are leaving and X doesn't want that to be something the remaining people focus on are they just calling people who have deleted their accounts "suspended"?
gsa|2 years ago
I stopped posting to Twitter some time last year but most of the people I follow on Twitter/X are still active and haven't moved. It is still the biggest platform compared to any of the alternatives (Mastodon/Bluesky) and despite the downward spiral it will be with us for a long time (just like Facebook).
parineum|2 years ago
I am not and have never been on Twitter so I can't speak for what's happening on the platform but the places I frequent that post news that's broken on Twitter haven't stopped doing that so, at the very least, influential people are still breaking news there at the same place.
I can't help but think that the people leaving Twitter meme is wishful thinking by people who dislike Musk.
johnnyanmac|2 years ago
I sure wish they were. I think that's exactly why for this brief moment the GP wants to focus more on he business realities than the same drama that's happened for the past 6 months.
unknown|2 years ago
[deleted]
OrvalWintermute|2 years ago
Twitter/X seems to have good engagement and there are active Geopolitics, Israeli/Zionist, Palestinian/Muslim, Russian, Ukrainian (NAFO), Covid, anti-MSM, anti-Disinfo, populist, Crypto/NFT, Black American, sports, and many Indian and African spaces on an ongoing regular basis, several running concurrently at many times of the day. I like that I can go into multiple spaces at different times and hear radically different perspectives unfiltered. This is why the platform appears to be getting much more sticky.
The Spaces bug where you can't hear people is the most annoying thing about it, other than the link interception.
I'm bothered by the 3 levels of subscription - the basic, premium and premium+. The premium still has ads everywhere, and the + does not, but costs more. I think both should be ad-free. I hate ads particularly when I am already paying for the service! https://help.twitter.com/en/using-x/x-premium#tbpricing-byco... Given that Premium users are supposed to see 50% less ads, I cannot imagine what kind of ad hellscape it would be if I was not at premium level. I block every ad X account I see.
It is a good place for breaking news and unfiltered data. There is still weaponization of the CommunityNotes, and active shilling and astroturfing by intelligence agencies doing propaganda online.
I have not used Grok at all so I cannot comment there
rsynnott|2 years ago
s1artibartfast|2 years ago
etchalon|2 years ago
This is why the abandonment of Twitter/X by large audience segments has been such a compounding effect. Even if they can replace 1:1 people they're losing with new users, if the users aren't the right type of demographic, ad spend is going to collapse.
Closi|2 years ago
If you are an eCommerce business selling a widget then you can easily get a cost per conversion, and then it's pretty easy to optimise your spend to maximise profits (i.e. If I spend $30 on ads, I can sell a product I buy for $40 for $90 making $20). I've seen businesses with this revenue model who will spend the equivalent of c.30-40% of revenue to get the sales due to the high margins often involved.
Your conversion will depend a lot on your product, target market, the ad etc (if you are selling a business rolodex your CPC might be better on linkedin, if you are selling a selfie-stick your CPC might be better on insta etc).
The effectiveness of advertising for engagement/brand awareness is much softer, and the spend will be much more discretionary as it is harder to track. It's these ads which are more likely to fall away IMO.