According to new data from Mediaradar, Disney, Comcast, Lionsgate Entertainment and Warner Bros. Discovery have all resumed ad spending on X.
A market intelligence company that tracks feed images, carousels and video ads captured from a panel of over 2 million US users (where the top 96% of impressions are tracked) has discovered that companies have spent less than $3.3 million on Elon Musk-owned platforms between January and September this year.
Comcast spent under $1.5 million on X ads over nine months, while Disney spent under $550,000, Lionsgate spent under $230,000, and WBD spent under $1.1 million. Meanwhile, Apple and IBM were also tracked, spending nothing more than $2,000 each.
A Disney spokesman confirmed to TheWrap that it has resumed advertising on the platform over the summer. Representatives from Comcast, Lionsgate and WBD did not immediately return a request for comment on TheWrap.
Major entertainment brands first paused their ad spending in November 2023 along with Sony, Paramount and Netflix. That’s after Musk promoted X’s (formerly Twitter) posts that praised anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, and faced intense criticism for agreeing.
At the time, the New York Times estimated that X was poised to lose $75 million in advertising revenue by the end of 2023 due to the suspension.
In addition to Disney, Lionsgate, Comcast and WBD, TheWrap previously reported that Netflix resumed advertising spending in December 2023 after the Times reported that Streamer had suspended around $3 million in ads due to controversy.
In total, Mediaradar’s data sample found that X ads had reached about $1.1 billion by the third quarter of 2024, down 29% from $1.5 billion in the same period last year.
The top three advertisers were Karma Shopping, GZ Jy Ecommerce (Canles Shoes) and Kuez Entertainment.
“We just want to say we are very grateful for the major brands reopening advertising on our platform,” Musk wrote in an X post on Friday. “Thank you to @Lindayax and the entire X team. Please restore confidence in the platform and make sure your ad content is displayed where advertisers see it.”
Some brands have resumed their working relationship with X, but some users of the platform have completely abandoned it after winning the 2024 election.
X Exodus beneficiaries include Bluesky. BlueSky jumped 62% in daily active user counts in the week after the election. According to Sensor Tower, threads with 11 million active users in the US during the same period increased by 6.8% from the day before the election.
Still, X enjoyed a 5% increase since the election of daily US users at the same time, using 25 million active American users daily for each sensor tower data.
