After big advertisers flee X, right-wing media outlets and influencers pledge to buy ads or donate, like Benny Johnson, Andrew Tate, Gavin McInnes, Babylon Bee
So far, they are at least hundreds of millions of dollars short on making up for X's potential lost revenue. … Disney.
Context & Ripple Effects
The pledges follow a wave of brand suspensions that included Disney and other major media companies in the coordinated pullback from X. They matter because the proposed support comes from politically aligned outlets and creators, while the article says it remains far below the revenue at risk.
Subsequent coverage of X's projected advertising shortfall and its push to win smaller advertisers shows the platform was confronting not just a temporary boycott but a difficult replacement-sales problem.
First-order effects
- Right-wing media outlets and influencers become prospective advertisers or donors to X, offering a visible but limited offset to departing large brands.
- X faces an immediate revenue-mix gap: the pledges do not replace the scale of ad spending potentially lost from major advertisers.
Second-order effects
- X has greater incentive to pursue fragmented sources of demand, including SMBs and third-party sales channels, rather than rely on a small group of large brands.
- The platform's advertiser base may become more politically concentrated, making brand-safety concerns harder to resolve for companies that paused spending.
Third-order effects
- If large brands remain reluctant while aligned supporters supply only limited revenue, X's ad business could shift from premium-brand dependence toward a lower-scale, more fragmented advertiser mix.
- The episode underscores how platform governance and perceived brand safety can directly reshape who funds a social network; whether that becomes durable depends on whether major advertisers return.
The trend: Social platforms are increasingly testing whether diversified, politically aligned, or smaller advertisers can compensate when major brands retreat over brand-safety concerns.