eMarketer expects X to generate $1.31B in US ad sales in 2025, up 17.5%, and $2.26B in global ad sales, up 16.5%, its first year of ad revenue growth since 2022
- Projections from Emarketer show sales up 17.5% this year — Sales remain significantly lower than before Musk's purchase
Context & Ripple Effects
X's advertising business had been in a steep contraction after the ownership change: monthly US ad revenue fell more than 55% year over year for 10 consecutive months through August 2023. Later 2023 reporting put quarterly ad revenue at just over $600 million, versus more than $1 billion per quarter in 2022.
eMarketer's forecast therefore marks an expected break from that decline, not a return to X's earlier advertising scale. The projected growth remains framed against a revenue base materially below the pre-acquisition period.
First-order effects
- The forecast gives X its first projected year of ad-sales growth since 2022, with US sales expected to reach $1.31 billion and global sales $2.26 billion in 2025.
- For advertisers and agencies, the estimate makes X a platform to reassess for budget planning after 2023 ad sales ran far below 2022 quarterly levels.
Second-order effects
- A growth year would shift the immediate question from whether X can arrest its advertising decline to whether it can sustain advertiser demand while rebuilding from a lower base.
- Other ad platforms retain the advantage of X's reduced scale: even the projected rebound does not erase the gap from its pre-acquisition ad business.
Third-order effects
- If growth persists, X's recovery would illustrate that ad platforms can regain revenue without quickly recovering their prior scale; the durability of that recovery will matter more than a single forecast year.
- The broader market is increasingly defined by incremental reallocation of digital ad budgets among platforms rather than a simple return to legacy leaders' former revenue levels.
The trend: X is a data point in the uneven post-shock rebuilding of digital ad businesses, where renewed growth can coexist with a substantially smaller revenue base.