Ellie Bamford, SVP, Global Head of Media and Connections at R/GA joined Cheddar News to discuss Musk's controversial tweet regarding Paul Pelosi and if the billionaire can keep advertisers confident. 

Wake Up With Cheddar

Can Elon Musk Keep Twitter’s Advertisers Happy?

joining us to discuss Ezeli bamford senior vice president and Global head of media and connections at R. G. A. Elliott, welcome to the show. Thanks so much for joining us this morning, that tweet had more than 24,000 retweets and more than 86,000 likes before it was deleted. What's your reaction to the tweet? And did this do more harm than it did good for Elon musk's first days here? Good morning Chloe, thank you so much for having me. Well, I think it's just indicative of the way that Ellen is going to come out and rain on twitter. I think that the big paradox really is that Elon musk accepts no rules or limitations on his behavior, but he has to accept them on his platform if he wants it to be safe for users and advertisers and that's the real challenge that we have right now is that advertisers are pulling back and are very nervous about what's going on. Yeah, that's a great point and it is safe to say of course that twitter does need its advertisers, regardless of whether we do see a tick up in, you know, paid subscriptions. But with musk's latest dear advertisers tweet and his talk of forming a governance council, do you think we're going to see more advertisers flew the platform. We already have Chloe, we've noticed about a 30% pullback in advertising dollars with twitter since this whole saga began and many brands are flocking to platforms that appear more stable like Tiktok, which is not something we thought we'd say a few years ago, there's been so many nervous conversations between brands and twitter and there's so much in flux and so many vague comments and uncertainty over what the platform will actually look like under musk's control. So while those of us in advertising, we appreciate the olive branch that he's extended to ease fears about moderation and brand safety. There's nothing concrete as yet and how all this really manifest depends on who's really at the helm here, the free speech absolutist or the savvy businessman And this is coming from someone, let's remember who's got very little impulse control and he just demonstrated that on the weekend. So his use of the words warm and welcoming to all doesn't provide a lot of comfort without a clear forward plan. And that's something he's never been known for and they need advertisers desperately advertising accounts for about 90% of Twitter's revenue And they haven't turned a profit for eight of the past 10 years. So it's a tough situation projections keep moving. E marketer estimated less than 2.9 billion in ad revenue for 22 for Twitter. Let's compare that to Instagram, they're expected to take in a whopping 33 billion alone for that platform and even relative newcomer, Tiktok could hit nearly 12 billion in ad sales this year. So without a plan for new revenue streams or an entirely new model, like Musk is throwing around Twitter's days of relying on ad dollars may have already been numbered anyway. Now, Ellie those are some really shocking statistics there, especially that 30% pullback that you mentioned, we have heard from GM of course making big headlines as it is temporarily halting advertising on its platform, stating that it's evaluating Twitter's new direction as you mentioned as well, and you know, also mentioning that it's still going to be using the platform to communicate with its customers but not paying for advertising. So you know how closely our other advertisers watching this and what might what might it take for advertisers like GM to come back to the platform. I think they expect and want to see firm commitments and clarity about brand safety and right now there's a lot of defeat the box hand waving and some nice tweets but bottom line is that advertisers don't want their brands associated with controversy and negativity and right now you see this happen, brands are under terrific pressure and heightened scrutiny about where they invest and who they partner with. So relaxing regulations and controls on the platform and essentially the Wild West ensuing makes it a really dangerous place for brands to put media investment and honestly a dangerous place to be as a user. The big question, any advertiser is thinking about when they're in a media environment, whether they're paying to be there or not is what content am I going to be next to and what's becoming clearer with musk's plan is that content might be a lot more unhinged. It's also a dangerous signal to the industry that this could be a trend for other platforms follow, like knocking a chip in the brand safety that everyone's pushed so hard with so much fever over the past four and five years. Must did say in his tweet to the advertising industry that twitter aspires to be the most respected advertising platform in the world, what that actually means, we don't know and Ellie, we will definitely check back in with you as more information rolls out about this. That's Ellie Bamford, senior vice president and global Head of Media and connections at R. G. A. Thank you so much for your time this morning.