Source: Linda Yaccarino told the banks that funded Elon Musk's Twitter takeover that X is testing three premium service tiers that vary how many ads are shown
- CEO Linda Yaccarino discusses plan in briefing to lenders — X advertisers have been returning, but with smaller budgets
BloombergAisha Counts
Context & Ripple Effects
The lender briefing follows Yaccarino's planned presentation to the banks behind Musk's takeover, making premium-tier testing a concrete part of the company’s revenue-revival case rather than a standalone product experiment. Her planned lender meeting had centered on laying out that recovery plan.
The proposal also sits against a difficult advertising backdrop: the article says advertisers were returning with smaller budgets, and later coverage reported a sharp decline in X's US revenue amid efforts to repair the business. Subsequent reporting on the recovery effort underscores why X was looking beyond a single ad-funded offering.
First-order effects
X can test whether users will pay more to reduce advertising exposure, while retaining an ad-supported option for lower-paying or free users.
Yaccarino gains a more specific monetization roadmap to present to lenders, with subscription pricing and ad load becoming linked levers rather than separate products.
Second-order effects
A lower-ad premium tier could reduce sellable ad impressions among X's most engaged paying users, forcing X to balance subscription revenue against ad inventory and advertiser reach.
Advertisers returning on smaller budgets may receive a more segmented audience pool, increasing pressure on X to demonstrate the value of ad-supported users and on competitors to refine their own paid tiers.
Third-order effects
If the model works, social platforms may increasingly treat advertising intensity as a feature users can buy down, shifting monetization from a single free, ad-funded product toward managed hybrid bundles.
The key constraint is cannibalization: higher subscription income must offset both lost ad exposure and the added complexity of operating multiple service levels.
The trend: X's tier test is part of the broader shift toward subscription-and-advertising hybrids that segment users by willingness to pay and tolerance for ads.
So many gens in this story • Advertisers have returned but are spending less money than before. How many of them returned to avoid Elon unleashing his fanboy army at them and so are simply spending the minimum? • The company is profitable if you don't count debt servicing. …
“Not including the cost of servicing debt, the company already is cash flow positive, Yaccarino said” NOT INCLUDING THE COST OF MORTGAGE PAYMENTS, MY HOUSE IS ALREADY CASH FLOW POSITIVE, WALK SAID https://www.bloomberg.com/...
Threads could be seriously be effing up a big opportunity by dragging their feet on new features and trying to second-guess whether they are needed (they are!)  @zuck and @mosseri : we are here ONLY to get away from Elon. Twitter is meeting with it's lenders today and could ev…
Removing headlines is stupid but then again look who is running/who owns Twitter/X. Someone needs to take Twitter/X away from Elon. Rather it's banks, investors, government or whomever & undo all the damage etc Elon has done to Twitter/X & help some the ppl that lost their jobs …
Seems as if there will be at least 3 separate tiers for X Premium (and the “premium basic” sounds closest to the current $8/month sub) .. wonder how much the “no ads” version would cost (side note: anyone remember how oldTwitter for years gave some blue checks ad-free just bc)
Is the current Premium equivalent to the standard tier? I'd happily go down to the cheaper basic tier if it only means more ads in For You. I don't mind.
X is already cash flow positive not including the cost of servicing debt. The company expects to reach that milestone even including debt by the back half of 2024
X's Linda Yaccarino met with bank lenders today to give an update on the business. Q3 revenue grew by a high single-digit percent compared to q2, per a source Link: https://www.reuters.com/... [image]