Elon Musk disclosed on Twitter Saturday that, twitter ad revenue is down and due to a 50% drop in twitter ad revenue and a “heavy debt load,” the platform still has a negative cash flow. Twitter’s ad revenue is down and Twitter debt is increasing as it is losing money.
Twitter’s ad revenue is down 59%, reports CNN, based on remarks by proprietor Elon Musk and an internal presentation it has seen.
Elon Musk twitter debt
Musk, who has been outspoken about the difficulties facing the company, broke the figures of twitter advertising revenue in a tweet response to a user who was giving suggestions on financing for the platform, reiterating that twitter ad revenue is down.
“We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load,” said Elon Musk on Twitter debt.
“Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else,” he added, without further elaboration on Twitter debt.
The tweet is in stark contrast to his tone in April, when Musk told the BBC the platform is now “roughly breaking even” and that most of its advertisers have returned.
Insider Intelligence has reported that Twitter advertising revenue was less than $3 billion in 2023, down one-third from 2022.
Changes instituted by Musk since his takeover of Twitter have turned off users and advertisers alike increasing twitter debt.
Dwindling Twitter ad revenue
Earlier this month, Musk announced that Twitter was limiting verified accounts to reading 10,000 tweets a day, in a bid “to address extreme levels of data scraping” and “system manipulation” by third-party platforms.
Non-verified users, the free accounts that make up the majority of users are limited to reading 1,000 tweets per day, while new unverified accounts are limited to 500 tweets.
Twitter’s ad revenue has been a contentious issue and an uphill battle for the site, after hordes of advertisers fled after Musk took over. Advertisers were concerned about content moderation, mass layoffs and general uncertainty about Twitter’s future.
Linda Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal marketing executive, recently took over the CEO position from Musk. He’s likely betting on her advertising experience to bring them back.
The New York Times reported that Twitter advertising revenue in U.S. from the five weeks, April 1 to the first week of May was down 59% year-over-year, citing an internal presentation.
Only 43% of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers were still advertising on the platform as of September, the month before Musk’s takeover, according to data provided to CNN by market intelligence firm Sensor Tower last month.
“It’s definitely been extremely difficult,” Musk said in Twitter Spaces livestream event Musk hosted with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr last month. “Basically, our revenue is cut in half because we didn’t toe the line.” He added it’s been a “huge struggle for Twitter to break even.”
Meta launching Threads
After its rival app, Meta’s Threads, surpassed 100 million downloads less than a week after it launched, Twitter is under increased pressure. The Twitter debt increasing due to ad revenue being down is building lot of pressure.
Musk has added a variety of cost-cutting or cash-seeking measures to the site, from giving blue checkmarks with a Twitter Blue membership to putting Tweetdeck behind a paywall to cover the Twitter debt.
Enticing content creators
On Thursday, Twitter announced content creators would be able to get a slice of the Twitter ad revenue, seemingly to encourage more creators to join the site. To be eligible, the creators must have Twitter Blue and have at least 5 million impressions on their posts in each of the last three months.
