Does Trump’s election signal a turnaround for advertising on X?

After Elon Musk took over Twitter and rebranded the platform to X, worldwide ad revenues were slashed in half, from $4.14 billion the year Musk took over in 2022 to $2.00 billion in 2023. EMARKETER forecasts those declines to continue through 2026, the end of our forecast period. But the reelection of Musk’s close ally, President Donald Trump, could change how some marketers think about the platform.

Advertisers may return to (or remain on) X to demonstrate goodwill to Musk.

• The billionaire will join the Trump administration as a leader of the new Department of Government Efficiency, promising sweeping federal spending cuts, like Musk’s at X.
• Brands including IBM, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Disney are returning to the platform, according to Fortune. These companies face government scrutiny and could benefit from having allies close to President Trump.

Companies returning to X likely won’t spend at the same rate as in 2021 and 2022, due to ongoing issues with X advertisements driving conversions.

• X users aren’t necessarily in a shopping mindset. Just 16% of social media users worldwide use the platform for product discovery, compared with 61% who use Instagram and 60% who use Facebook, according to data from Sprout Social and Cint.
• Just 5.5% of marketers worldwide use X for influencer campaigns, compared with 58.9% who use TikTok and 35.2% who use Instagram, per Influencer Marketing Hub.
• X will capture just 0.2% of worldwide digital ad spend in 2025, per March 2024 EMARKETER forecast. In comparison, Facebook will nab 14.6% and TikTok/Douyin will grab 7.1%.

“The problem Twitter has faced now, and even well before Musk took over, is that it was never a very high-performing social channel for brands. The brand safety discussion seemed to dominate the media, but a big reason brands have not leaned in is because of performance metrics, and how much more efficient media can be spent on other social platforms,” said Keith Bendes, vice president of strategy and GTM at Linqia. “Brands will go where the performance is, so unless Musk can improve the media metrics for advertisers they will never have incentive to make Twitter a significant part of their media strategy.”

Brands returning to X may not spend as much as before because the platform is still losing users.

• Total X users worldwide will decrease by 2.7% to reach 349.1 million next year, per a March 2024 EMARKETER forecast.
• Bluesky gained one million users in the week following the election to reach 15 million users worldwide.

Bluesky doesn’t have ads, so even if it replaces some X users, it won’t replace advertisers. Marketers may set up an organic brand presence on the platform, but that doesn’t mean they’ll leave X.

Because X’s leadership is now so closely intertwined with the Trump administration, brands will have to decide whether staying or leaving the platform aligns with their own brand identity. Those seeking to appear neutral will either abstain from changing their current strategy or will quietly return to advertising with the platform. But it’s unlikely ad spend will return to where it once was.

This was originally featured in the EMARKETER Daily newsletter. For more marketing insights, statistics, and trends, subscribe here.