Source: Twitter manager Siddharth Rao told employees that daily revenue was 40% lower than a year earlier and more than 500 top advertisers have paused spending
A senior Twitter manager told employees that the company's daily revenue on Tuesday was 40% lower than the same day a year ago …
Context & Ripple Effects
The 40% daily-revenue drop Siddharth Rao described to employees is not an isolated bad day — it lands inside a documented slide. The very next day, The Information reported Q4 2022 revenue of $1.025B, just 72% of the company's own goal, and by March the investor update showed December revenue and adjusted earnings both down 40% YoY as advertisers fled.
What makes this report distinct is the breadth: more than 500 top advertisers pausing at once turns a demand dip into a structural withdrawal. It also echoes an old pattern — back in 2016, Twitter's Q3 forecast came in well below analyst estimates on stagnant user growth — except now the decline is measured in existing advertisers leaving rather than new ones failing to arrive.
First-order effects
- Twitter's ad book thins immediately: with 500+ top advertisers paused and daily revenue down 40% YoY, the company enters Q1 2023 guiding itself to $732M — a further 39% YoY decline it set as its own target.
Second-order effects
- With Twitter private and no longer reporting quarterly results, third parties fill the disclosure gap: Pathmatics' tracking of the top-1,000 advertisers and leaked internal documents become the market's primary window into the business.
Third-order effects
- If the pause behavior holds, large advertisers treat platform ownership changes and moderation shifts as a standing brand-safety risk, repricing their commitments to any single social platform rather than treating reach there as guaranteed.
The trend: Twitter's ad business is shifting from cyclical softness to advertiser-led structural withdrawal, with third-party measurement replacing public filings as the way the decline gets tracked.