Top Twitter advertisers face 'name and shame' threat

Major brands which are continuing to advertise on Twitter following Elon Musk’s controversial $44bn (£38.1bn) takeover – which has seen a mass exodus of senior staff and users as well as the return of Donald Trump – face being named and shamed by activists.

A coalition of 60 civil society groups, dubbed the Stop Toxic Twitter coalition, has issued an ultimatum to leading brands, having obtained a list of the social media site’s top 100 advertisers by total spend.

According to data from Pathmatics, the top 100 advertisers spent an estimated $23.6m on Twitter between November 10 to November 16, down from $24.2million a month before. Advertising makes up about 90% of the site’s revenue.

Some 51 companies have already paused ads – including Volkswagen, Audi, Balenciaga, Carlsberg, Pfizer, Macy’s and United Airlines – while marketing groups IPG, WPP and Omnicom have all advised their clients to follow suit.

However, Stop Toxic Twitter is appealing to companies that have not publicly stated their stance – including Apple, Coca-Cola, P&G, Unilever and Comcast – to issue statements and help generate pressure on the other 49 advertisers.

The group has threatened to name the companies later this week if they have not issued a public statement about pausing ads.

Angelo Carusone, president of Media Matters for America, which is part of the coalition, said: “You need to take a stand and draw the line. It’s important for big spenders to say they have stopped.”

Stop Toxic Twitter said it had been forced to act because Musk has reneged on his pledge to only reinstate banned accounts on the advice of a content moderation council. Over the weekend, the accounts of Donald Trump, former kickboxer Andrew Tate and parody site Babylon Bee were all reinstated before the council had been set up.

Musk’s premium subscription product, Twitter Blue – due to be relaunched on November 29 after a botched first attempt – has now been delayed further until the problem of impersonation on the platform has been resolved.

He tweeted: “Holding off relaunch of Blue Verified until there is high confidence of stopping impersonation,” and that we “will probably use different color check for organizations than individuals”.

Twitter UK managing director Dara Nasr and planning director David Wilding are both understood to be leaving the company following the sacking of more than half of Twitter’s 7,500 full-time workers and thousands of contractors.

More celebrities are leaving the site, with the guitarist Jack White and Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor the latest to join an exodus.

Reznor said: “I’m about to depart. We don’t need the arrogance of the billionaire class to feel like they can just come in and solve everything.” To which Musk responded: “And it turns out that Trent ‘nine inch nails’ Reznor is actually a crybaby.”