👉 Background: Elon Musk officially took over Twitter in late October and since then he has:

• Walked into the office with a sink to "let that sink in"
• Laid off nearly half of Twitter's workforce - 7,500 employees globally
• Announced that anyone can get access to a blue-verified tick for $8 per month
• Pulled that blue-tick feature because Twitter users were impersonating major brands

👉 What happened: Also, during this time, major advertisers have stopped advertising on Twitter because of concerns around how Twitter is moderating its content. We’re talking brands like General Mills, Pfizer, Audi, Volkswagen and Mondelez. And this has caused a “massive drop in revenue”.

👉 What else: So now, Twitter has announced new controls that let companies stop their ads from appearing next to tweets that they don’t align with. It’s all part of Twitter's plan to attract back advertisers to the platform.

What's the key learning?

💡 You can choose your friends, but you can’t choose your ad placements on Twitter. At least, you couldn’t in the past. Brands have become concerned about the potential for their advertisements to appear next to offensive or inappropriate content.

💡 It's not the best look when you’ve got ads for Amazon, Snap and Uber appearing next to a post from a white nationalist. But now, companies will be able to say “don’t put my ads next to tweets that use the word "war" or "fight".

💡Musk is hoping this will give them the comfort to splash more cash in the Twitter-sphere. Since Twitter earns nearly 90% of its revenue from selling digital ads - it kinda needs to get these brands back on board if it wants to survive.

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