[Thread] Elon Musk tells advertisers in a Spaces chat that Twitter plans to improve ad relevance, he will pay to verify brands if they don't want to, and more
Sara Fischer / @sarafischer :
Context & Ripple Effects
This Spaces chat is the third round of advertiser courtship since the takeover: after an April email insisting Twitter would stay safe for brands and an October public reassurance followed by an open letter, Musk is now addressing advertisers directly and interactively in a Spaces room.
The new element is specificity — a commitment to improve ad relevance and an offer to pay for brand verification out of his own pocket — arriving while sources had already reported advertisers' concerns about looser moderation and auto-ad conflicts ahead of the takeover.
First-order effects
- Advertisers get two concrete concessions: relevance work on the ads product itself, and Musk personally covering verification costs for brands unwilling to pay — removing the price objection while implicitly confirming brands' hesitation.
Second-order effects
- With [[a:986095|Pathmatics later showing about 70% of Twitter's top 100 pre-takeover ad spenders going quiet by mid-December]], persuasion alone proved insufficient — pushing Twitter into paid incentives like the January offer of up to $250K in matched free ad space tied to Super Bowl-window spending.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, Twitter's ad business becomes structurally dependent on founder-led guarantees and spending subsidies rather than advertiser confidence in the platform's own moderation and measurement — a fragile substitute for institutional trust.
The trend: Twitter under Musk is substituting personal persuasion and financial sweeteners for the advertiser trust its content-moderation changes eroded.