Sources: Twitter's US ad revenue was 80% below internal expectations for the week of the World Cup's Nov. 20 start, as Twitter keeps missing weekly ad targets
Under Elon Musk, the company has cut its financial expectations as some advertisers request discounts and are offered incentives.
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the sharpest data point yet in a six-month slide that began with Twitter still posting growth: in July the company reported Q2 ad revenue up 2% to $1.08B and blamed its troubles on acquisition uncertainty and ad-industry headwinds. By late November the picture had inverted — EMEA revenue down 15% year over year and weekly bookings down 49% — and now US revenue for the World Cup's opening week, historically premium inventory, came in 80% below what Twitter itself had planned for.
What makes this report different is the mechanism: advertisers aren't just pausing, they're requesting discounts and being offered incentives, while management cuts its own weekly targets rather than missing them publicly. The pattern held — an investor update later showed a 40% year-over-year revenue and adjusted-earnings decline for December, and by spring US ad revenue was running at $88M for five weeks, down 59% with no expected recovery.
First-order effects
- Advertisers now hold pricing power over Twitter: those requesting discounts get them or receive incentives, meaning the company is effectively repricing its inventory downward to keep spend on the platform.
- Twitter's planning process has shifted from hitting weekly ad targets to lowering them — internal expectations are being cut so misses don't compound, which resets the baseline every future quarter is judged against.
Second-order effects
- Discounting during the World Cup window devalues the same premium inventory Twitter will try to sell at full price in future tentpole events, giving buyers a reference point to anchor lower bids.
- With US revenue collapsing and EMEA bookings already down 49%, Twitter's push toward subscription revenue — including Blue, delayed partly to avoid App Store fees — becomes less optional and more existential to the P&L.
Third-order effects
- If the discount-and-incentive cycle persists, Twitter risks converting a temporary advertiser pullback into a structural repricing of its ad business, where large buyers treat the platform as distressed inventory rather than a planned channel.
- A major platform losing this much ad share this fast tests whether brand-safety-driven flight is reversible; the outcome will shape how much leverage advertisers believe they have over other platforms they threaten to pause.
The trend: Twitter's ad business under Elon Musk has moved from growth to managed decline, with advertiser leverage — discounts, incentives, pauses — now setting the terms instead of the sell-side.