Elon Musk’s X sees ad spending return by Disney, IBM, Comcast, after Trump win

Elon Musk’s social media platform X (Formerly Twitter) has seen a resurgence of ad spending by brands such as Comcast, IBM, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Lionsgate Entertainment, according to an Adweek report which cited data from marketing intelligence platform MediaRadar.
This phenomenon was attributed this to the win of Republican candidate Donald Trump in the US elections this year. Musk has been one of the strongest supporters of Trump, donating as much as around $119 million to his campaign, as well as publicly endorsing him on X.
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X’s top advertisers include brands like Karma Shopping, Canles Shoes, and Kueez Entertainment, all of which spent over $12 million this year, totaling $68 million, according to the report.
This comes after the brands, which includes Apple, paused their ad campaigns around November 2023 after their ads appeared next to antisemitic content and hate speech, according to the report.
However, the ad spending though resumed, is at much lower rates than before.
Comcast, spent less than $1.5 million on X this year, followed by Warner Bros. Discovery spent $1.1 million, Disney spent under $550,000, Lionsgate spent less than $230,000, and IBM allocated under $2,000, the report read. More notably, Apple has now also continued its X ad spending.
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However, this also comes at a time of X facing its biggest exodus ever, with 115,000 users leaving the platform on the day after the election. This was the biggest drop since Musk took over the platform in 2022.
But at the same time, X also saw record web traffic, attracting 46.5 million visits, which was the highest in the past year, and also 38% higher than the average daily traffic during the recent months.
“X’s owner now has the ear of the president-elect, a man who has a long history of helping his friends, and punishing his enemies,” the report quoted Max Willens, senior analyst, at Emarketer as saying. “Sending at least a trickle of ad spending toward X may be seen as good for business, albeit in an indirect way.”
All of this also comes at a time when online abuse targeting women with rhetoric like “Your body, my choice” and “get back to the kitchen” have surged since the elections on X and TikTok.
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