X manages for a 40 percent decline in advertising revenue

Company X (formerly Twitter) is on track to generate nearly $2.5 billion in ad revenue by 2023, sources familiar with the matter said. Bloomberg.

According to sources, revenue has reached $600 million in the quarter so far this year, and roughly the same is expected in the current quarter. Compared to quarterly advertising revenues of more than $1 billion last year, we are therefore talking about a decline of up to 40 percent.

Advertising is said to constitute 70-75 percent of total revenue. This suggests a cap of about $3.4 billion in 2023, which includes revenue from the sale of data licenses and X Premium subscriptions. According to the news agency, the original goal of $3 billion in advertising and subscription sales will not be reached.

– Incomplete picture

External estimates place subscription revenue at less than $120 million annually. In 2021, X (then known as Twitter) generated $572 million in licensing revenue.

The numbers give an incomplete picture of the entire work, as their sources do not provide accurate and comprehensive details. (…) We are a new global company in development, with multiple revenue streams. We’re not Twitter anymore, and we don’t measure ourselves against the old Twitter metrics — neither in terms of revenue nor in terms of users, COO Joe Benarroch tells Bloomberg.

X hasn’t provided numbers since Elon Musk took office in October 2022, but the company had more than $5 billion in revenue in the year before he took office. Then-management, led by Jack Dorsey, exited in early 2021 with a revenue target of $7.5 billion.

It scares advertisers

Instead, Musk implemented aggressive cost cuts and frightened advertisers with controversial posts to his 165 million followers. For example, in November, he lent support to an anti-Semitic post, and companies like Apple and Walt Disney responded by temporarily halting advertising on the platform.

The owner of

At the same event, Musk acknowledged that the failure of advertising revenues is a big problem, so big that it could eventually lead to the company’s collapse. According to the news agency, X has recently tried to make itself more independent from large advertisers by addressing small and medium-sized businesses more.

What may still be a challenge – for both existing and potential advertisers – is that Musk has allowed back users who were previously kicked out of X – something that recently happened to well-known conspiracy theorist Alex Jones.