Elon Musk’s ownership of X (formerly Twitter) has not been without its challenges and criticisms.

Since buying the social media platform in 2022, Musk has been in the headlines over misinformation, buyer’s remorse, warring with advertisers, and more. Now, X has driven the nonprofit Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) to close its doors after serving the nonprofit with a lawsuit over advertising on the platform.

In this episode of Yeah, That’s Probably an Ad, ADWEEK’s brand editor Rebecca Stewart and community editor Luz Corona are joined by Trishla Ostwal, AI and tech reporter, and Catherine Perloff, platforms reporter.

They discuss the ongoing controversy surrounding Musk’s ownership of X, its impact on the advertising industry, and what might happen next. They also talk about what they’ve heard from sources about X’s brand safety measures, and what buyers are really thinking.

To learn more, listen to the latest episode or check out key takeaways below.

This is an ideological issue

Ostwal and Perloff take us back to the start, highlighting Musk’s questionable comments on X and the subsequent backlash from advertisers. Advertisers initially started boycotting X due to concerns about brand safety and offensive content. Then, Musk’s free speech agenda clashed with brands’ desire to distance themselves from problematic content.

As a result, X’s revenue dropped and the number of advertisers on the platform decreased; ad spend on X dropped 20% year-over-year in 2024, from $788 million in 2023 to $628 million, per MediaRadar.

X’s lawsuit is like ‘Hershey’s suing people who don’t buy candy’

The relationship between Musk and advertisers has become antagonistic. Perloff likens the decision to sue GARM, Unilever, Mars and CVS for “conspiring to boycott X” to “Hershey’s suing people who don’t buy candy.” All this is creating uncertainty for ad buyers and raising concerns about the viability of advertising on X.

GARM was more helpful than harmful

GARM was a leading organization in establishing standards for what constitutes brand safety, although they weren’t the only one doing so (there are tech vendors that brands pay to help do this). GARM’s role involved setting guidelines for where brands should or should not advertise, often based on ideological considerations. This was crucial because brand safety measures can impact important journalism, since ads may be pulled from significant but controversial content.

Advertisers relied on GARM to know where to draw the line in a very complicated and fractured digital media ecosystem.

Advertisers have ongoing frustrations with X beyond brand safety

Among some advertisers, there have been concerns that anti-misinformation efforts are “too liberal-leaning,” said Perloff, causing hesitation and uncertainty. However, brands often return to large platforms such as X, since there are few viable alternatives.

Ostwal adds that marketers tell her they’re still frustrated with X due to poor sales support and communication. Agencies have reported difficulties getting reliable responses from X’s sales representatives, especially after Musk’s takeover, she said.

Every Olympic season is a chance to get obsessed with some sport you just learned about, cry over an athlete from a place you didn’t know about winning gold, and generally get worked up at a perfect Simone Biles floor routine. It wasn’t long ago (circa 2010s) when the Olympics meant catching the games at odd hours or watching replays during primetime. While I certainly did my part this year to binge all things Team USA, I couldn’t help but notice the difference in experiences this year.

Conversations between friends and coworkers watching different things at different times shifted from “Are you seeing this?” to “Oh, you have to go watch it, I’ll send a TikTok.” What were once key moments of a shared collective experience, have splintered.

Welcome to the era of solo streaming. As an introvert, I’m fine with this (just kidding). Let’s break down this Olympic-sized behavioral shift and what it means.

RIP to the collective experience of live TV

When people watch sports together, they report a higher rate of fulfillment. It turns out that cheering together helps create a shared identity within a community. The Olympics is the pinnacle of this, a rare time when an entire nation can tap into this kind of shared experience. Then came new viewing options that irrevocably altered behaviors.

This year, Peacock became the definitive hub for complete Olympic coverage, a significant evolution since its attempt at a start when launching in time for the postponed 2021 Olympics. Every event is now available at our convenience in replay and as-it-happens. Watch what you want, when you want. The flexibility is undoubtedly convenient—while coming at the cost of fracturing the sense of collective experience into isolated moments.

Social media crumbs

Adding to this fragmentation are our favorite platforms like TikTok and Instagram. They flood our feeds with the highlights almost instantly, often before events are even aired traditionally or across non-Peacock services. Because of these platforms’ distaste for chronological order, we’d encounter clips out of order, disrupting a sense of real-time, joint viewing, and they often spoiled the results.

Shrinking the gap between event time and online conversation

The gap between a live global event like the Olympics and online conversation has become a crucial metric in understanding modern viewing behaviors. What was typically a chill day-long lag (Olympic location dependent) has compressed into mere minutes. The conversation starts almost immediately, even peaking before an event has finished airing in some time zones. The rapid dissemination of information feeds into a fragmentation of the viewing experience dilutes any sense of collective engagement.

What these shifts are telling us

This isn’t just about the Olympics or viewership rates. It is about loneliness and acknowledging the facilitators of community slipping away. In our drive for individualism, we are seeing a rise in people eager to find their place as part of a collective whole.

For brands and marketers, it means strategies that require innovative approaches to creating engaging, real-time interactions—here are a few examples.

Remember, it’s an ecosystem. There is a real creative opportunity for platforms and media to partner on the future of dual-screen watching. Consider how the live feed functionality of social apps can be leveraged by layering in things like live reactions, games, and more for shared moments and branded content.

Go beyond the comments. NBC and Peacock were able to create an interactive homebase on TikTok to curate those social crumbs and gather higher rates of impressions and engagements. Continue to think about how to pull consumers together as a collective beyond what happens in the comments section.

Become the facilitators of online communities. Dig into the storylines that resonate with different segments, ask why, and inquire about the conversations they will have following their events. Actively listen and encourage their ongoing support, interests, and more.

Oh and, yes, sports is still a smart investment. Despite behavior shifts, live sports remain one of the last bastions of collective experiences, allowing individualized yet collective communities to unite. Hook ‘em horns.

Last September, in an initiative called the Helpful Content Update, Google made many changes to the algorithm that powers its search results.

Despite its innocuous name, the update dramatically reshaped the search landscape, throttling traffic to smaller, independent websites while increasing the visibility of others, according to Ewen Finser, the founder of growth agency ReddVisible.

The update gave heightened search visibility to user forums like Quora and Reddit—Google even added a Forums tab to its search results—and Reddit in particular has since seen its traffic skyrocket. Between August 2023 and April 2024, readership to the 20-year-old platform nearly tripled, rising from 132 million visitors to 346 million monthly visitors, according to data from Semrush.

“No matter where you are in digital, Reddit is the elephant in the room right now,” Finser said. “According to Ahrefs and Semrush, Reddit increased its organic traffic sevenfold in the last nine months. That’s big, exponential growth on an already big number.”

In response, publishers have revisited their audience development strategies for the platform in hopes of funneling some of this burgeoning audience into a new source of social traffic.

Some, such as Yahoo, Puck, and New York Times Opinion, have launched new Reddit accounts in the last several months. Others, such as Rolling Stone, The Philadelphia Inquirer, The Independent, the AP, and Newsweek, have restarted existing accounts or dedicated more resources to them.

Publishers redouble their Reddit strategies

For publishers launching new Reddit accounts, turning those presences into substantial sources of traffic could be a years-long effort. 

In the meantime, the platform offers publishers a venue for engaging with subreddits and readers already sharing their reporting, according to Puck chief executive Sarah Personette. This can help drive brand affinity, engagement, traffic, and ultimately subscriber conversion, as these audiences are already exhibiting a strong interest in the publication.

“We’re targeting subreddits where our reporters’ writing is already being shared by members, with the idea that we’re delighting these members with these surprise appearances and helping to drive brand exposure,” Personette said.

For publishers reactivating or revamping dormant accounts, their renewed efforts have already begun paying dividends. Most news organizations were hesitant to share specific traffic data—for many, Reddit is still a single-digit source of overall referral traffic. But the readership is steadily growing. 

At Newsweek, for instance, July was its biggest month for Reddit traffic ever. And before that, June was its biggest. Likewise, one publisher that spoke to ADWEEK on background had its biggest month of Reddit referrals ever in July, up 132% year over year. At The Washington Post, in the last 12 months, traffic from Reddit has occasionally overtaken traffic from Instagram, which had never happened before.

Rolling Stone also redoubled its efforts on Reddit last spring, hiring a member of its audience team dedicated solely to cultivating its Reddit presence. In the last eight months, seven of those increased in traffic year over year.

Responding to shifting traffic patterns

These efforts, which are motivated in part by the increasing search visibility of Reddit, also come as a response to shifting traffic patterns more broadly. 

Social referrals from Facebook have declined 58% since 2018, according to data from the measurement firm Chartbeat. And disruptions to search traffic posed by artificial intelligence—not to mention algorithm updates—have spurred publishers to look elsewhere for new sources of readership.

The strategy reflects the increasing atomization of the internet, as well as how publishers have responded to find and serve their audiences. Just as news organizations have worked to diversify their revenue makeups in recent years, they have also placed a renewed emphasis on cultivating a broad portfolio of traffic referral sources.

“We all know that the era of big social as a traffic driver is over and will never return,” said Josh Awtry, the senior vice president of audience development at Newsweek. “Every publisher is looking to see where its next batch of readers can come from, and Reddit is poised to win in this next era of conversation.”

New tools from Reddit facilitate publishers’ efforts

For publishers looking to work more closely with Reddit, their timing could not have been better. 

Reddit, which joined the public markets in March, has released a suite of new products over the last year designed to make the platform easier to navigate for brands, including news publishers, according to Sarah Rosen, senior director of media business development.

Among these new tools is a simplified version of its AMA feature, which makes the iconic Reddit product far simpler to use. There is also an improved embed product, which enables reporters to more easily include Reddit posts into stories. A tool called Reddit Pro is a free dashboard that displays analytics that helps brands understand how users are engaging with their content.

Publishers including The Independent, Yahoo, Puck, and The Philadelphia Inquirer have all used the new AMA function, which allows them to schedule and promote the AMA ahead of time, add co-hosts, and end it with a note. 

In April, The Independent hosted an AMA with two of its politics reporters discussing the Trump criminal trial, which generated over 200 comments and questions, according to audience editor Valentina Botero.

“We have a renewed focus on how we are supporting publishers, and bridging the gap between publishers and communities is a big part of that,” Rosen said. “Our goal isn’t to make our partners dependent on Reddit—it’s to make Reddit additive to what they’re already doing.”

TikToker Megan Boni (a.k.a. Girl on Couch) went viral with her parody of dating life, “Looking for a Man in Finance,” which has inspired hundreds of remixes. Now, Boni puts another spin on the club hit by encouraging people to invest in their skin as part of a social campaign from SkinCeuticals.

Created by WPP Onefluence and led by Ogilvy PR, the remix marks the debut of the L’Oréal brand’s wrinkle-modulating peptide serum, P-TIOX. In the sponsored TikTok video, Boni dances and sings, “Now I’m the one in finance, investing, great skin, win win,” while showing off a bottle of the serum.

The new version of the song makes a link between self-care and financial well-being, Angela Hildebrand, SkinCeuticals’ U.S. general manager, told ADWEEK.

“With ‘Looking for a Man in Finance’ on everyone’s minds this summer, we saw a unique opportunity to collaborate and shift the focus to how skincare can be a savvy financial decision,” Hildebrand said. “This partnership is all about empowering individuals to make informed, confident choices about their finances and their skincare routines.”

Besides Boni, the brand enlisted a group of beauty and finance influencers, including dermatologist Dr. Mamina Turegano and Rich AF author Vivian Tu, to serve as “Skinvestors.” They will offer advice through custom TikTok and Instagram content such as an Ask Me Anything on SkinCeuticals’ Instagram page.

SkinCeuticals also partnered with media company Girls That Invest to host a social media giveaway awarding access to an investing webinar, a skincare consultation and a mentoring session with founder Simran Kaur.

“We’re aiming to connect with people who care about both their skincare and their financial savvy. This includes folks who are already into injectables or those who are thinking about high-quality skincare options,” Hildebrand explained.

Boni’s original song is not actually about finance, but rather pokes fun at dating application fatigue and the concept of the “ideal man.” Since releasing it earlier this year, she’s landed a deal with Universal Music Group.

Who doesn’t love a meme or pop culture moment? Especially when it seems like all of the internet wants to be a part of a collective memory or joke. Leveraging trending pop culture references can be a goldmine for brands looking to connect with their audience.

As I’m writing this, you may have someone from your team asking if you should jump on the “Hawk Tuah” trend, since it’s still gaining traction and the girl behind it seems to be everywhere. Hopefully, the following will go beyond the traditional advice of playing it safe or doing it because enough other large brands are posting about it.

The key question remains: When and why should brands dive into current trends? And, say it with me now, it depends. Let’s break down what it depends on.

Brand safety

Brand safety isn’t what it used to be if it ever really was.

Your ad could be shown alongside content in the feed that is counter to the messaging you want near your brand, and yet it’s the risk you take for guaranteed views. We’re seeing more and more AI ad content being created while we also have brands navigating how to deal with major issues during an election year. The internet is a controversial and precarious place and yet, brands know they need to show up and be present.

The ever-present desire for attention, views and engagement has brands abandoning brand safety for earned media and virality, chasing attention at all costs and linking themselves with memes and references that you would never even dream of proposing let alone pressuring legal to approve.

Timing

Jumping on a trending topic can gain significant attention, but timing is crucial. Catch a trend too early and your audience might be confused. Too late, and you’ll come off as trying too hard. The sweet spot is in the middle, where the trend is recognizable but not yet saturated. Being best friends with your legal and comms teams is priceless here as these moments can age quickly and no one wants to be the brand that got approval two weeks too late.

Timing isn’t just about when a trend peaks; it’s also about your brand’s agility. Here are some questions to consider:

• Do we have set rules with legal and comms about what we can and can’t mention as a brand?
• Does this lessen the trust that our customers/audience have in us?
• Does this align with who we are as a brand or align with our Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?
• Is this a short-term play for attention and engagement, or are we a brand that strives to be culturally relevant?
• Do we have long-term initiatives to entertain or be “in the know” with our audience?

Engaging with trends should never come at the expense of your brand’s trust and authenticity. If your audience sees your attempt as inauthentic, they could lose faith in your brand and not take you as seriously. Does jumping on this make sense in a way where your audience might be delighted and amused that you jumped into the conversation versus feeling like the brand is begging for attention?

Always consider whether a trending reference aligns with brand values and messaging. Playful references are an easy way to explore these opportunities without breaking through your brand guardrails. If so, what would this look like? Will you reference a certain movie scene or meme that isn’t tainted by any current scandals?

It’s not enough to question brand safety when considering jumping on to a trend; one needs to recognize if the customer base would get the reference in the first place. Is this a popular trend or do you have to be chronically online to get it?

Audience

Reading the room is essential when engaging with pop culture moments. How could this age badly?

Pop culture trends can be fleeting, and what’s funny or relevant today could be outdated—or worse, offensive—tomorrow. Assess whether your current audience is talking about it, and more critically, what the sentiment around it is. Engaging with a trend that is controversial or negatively perceived could backfire, harming your brand’s reputation.

The social strategist doesn’t show their experience in saying yes to every trend that is possible to jump on, but in the ones they say no to. It can be tempting to jump on a trend in the moment, forgetting the long-lasting implications of a misstep (the internet is forever). Understanding a brand well enough to discern what are the best opportunities is the mark of a great strategist.

Cultural relevance

It’s vital to balance short-term gains like engagement spikes with long-term objectives. A sudden burst of attention might feel rewarding, but it rarely builds sustained loyalty. Brands should weigh whether jumping onto a trend is a mere bid for quick attention or a genuine effort to stay culturally relevant.

There isn’t necessarily a right or wrong answer to this because each brand has its own unique identity and strategy. For some, chronic trend-chasing can dilute their brand message, while for others, it’s a goldmine of opportunity.

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Let’s say this is a part of your long-term strategy to be culturally relevant and unabashedly push what content can be made for a brand. Lean in and show that it truly is a part of your brand’s DNA. Duolingo is a great example of not just trying to be unhinged here and there. They go all the way with it and it’s embedded in their brand and its perception. They leaned in and they are winning because of it.

What about B2B brands?

B2B marketing has traditionally been seen as more conservative and, some might argue, boring.

However, there’s a growing push for B2B brands to show up more creatively and frankly less stuffy. Succinct, timely and sometimes even unhinged content can yield impressive engagement. This shift isn’t just about standing out; the brands that win are the ones that successfully adapt without sacrificing their core values.

That said, engagement must be relevant. Just because content is unhinged or trendy doesn’t mean it will convert to revenue. It’s essential to continually measure the effectiveness and alignment of these strategies with wider business objectives.

Autodesk has done the work to be thoughtful about how they approach pop culture and activate their content to act more like a B2C brand versus the traditional B2B approach.

Aligning short-term and long-term goals to these activations is critical when deciding whether to leverage a trend. Build out a process for your team to jump onto relevant content when things aren’t happening, so you aren’t left scrambling when you see a Slack message that says “Everyone else is doing it.” Instead, it needs to fit into a broader strategy that considers both immediate engagement and eventual conversion.

Navigating the landscape of trending pop culture references requires a delicate balance. Brands must assess their readiness, ensure alignment with their values and weigh the benefits and risks. While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, thoughtful strategy and authentic engagement can lead to meaningful, lasting connections with your audience.

Elon Musk and his X leadership team still have a long way to go to lure advertisers back to the platform following the owner’s bid to smooth relations at the Cannes Lions Festival last month, six sources told ADWEEK.

Musk dialed back on his 2023 provocative “go fuck yourself” comment to advertisers, explaining that X is using artificial intelligence to improve ad targeting capabilities.  

“There’s still a long way to go to get buyers back on X,” the first agency executive, who wasn’t authorized to speak to media, told ADWEEK. “What also has to happen is more tangible updates to the products, and not just lip service of ‘come back.’”

Further, Stagwell CEO Mark Penn’s comments that Stagwell is telling clients to “absolutely test advertising [on X] and see if it works” are not currently consistent with what at least one Stagwell agency is telling clients, which is to be cautious as brand safety concerns still loom, according to a second executive familiar with the matter.

“Clients have been holding back on ad spend,” the second executive said. “X doesn’t have the manpower to help agencies for direct connection, and we haven’t seen enough to have full confidence in brand safety.”

In June, X had 26.2 million daily active mobile application users in the U.S., down 13% year-over-year, according to Sensor Tower estimates. The firm also estimates that 73 of the top 100 advertisers have stopped advertising on X since October 2022, shortly before the acquisition, concerned with how the platform handles content moderation and brand safety.

Ad dollars on X dropped 20% year-over-year in 2024, from $788 million in 2023 to $628 million, per MediaRadar. The number of companies advertising on X also dipped 11% year-over-year, from nearly 12,000 in 2023 to 10,600 in 2024 during the same period.

“It’s wartime, and dollars are hard to come by in general,” the first agency executive said. “Because of brand safety issues, [not spending on X] is an easy decision to make.” Musk’s history of amplifying antitrans and antisemitic comments to his 188.6 million followers still has buyers nervous.

For its part, X has seen some brand safety developments under CEO Linda Yaccarino’s leadership, including a partnership with Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify. The latter, however, apologized in April after erroneously providing wrong data for X to advertisers.

But with the upcoming U.S. elections, Musk’s free-speech agenda adds to the platform’s volatility, sources said.

“There’s going be a lot of [political] content on X,” said Shamsul Chowdhury, executive vice president of paid social at Jellyfish. “How does X manage that and make brands feel safe to be in that space?”

X had not responded to comments by press time.

Using a chatbot to streamline ad targeting

Details of X’s AI-powered ad targeting capabilities are scant.

Other platforms have been offering some type of AI-ad targeting for years, with Google’s Performance Max and Meta’s Advantage+ ratcheting up the most recent headlines for being effective but also not entirely transparent.

In the past month, the first agency executive was shown a preview of an AI targeting tool from X that had a similar interface to ChatGPT. Buyers can type in their target audience—for instance, people who enjoy running or are in running clubs.

“The current status quo is that you manually toggle targeting options like demographics or psychographic behavior,” the first agency executive said. “[The AI tool] is trying to make that streamlined.”

However, because not much active spending is happening on the platform through this agency, it has yet to test the tool on a live campaign.

This exec also noted that X lacks the performance-driven tools available on rival platforms such as Meta, TikTok and Snap.

“There’s no shortage of platforms for advertisers to spend their ad dollars,” said Chowdhury. “How does X make a claim for the budget when they don’t necessarily have the ad products that are competitive to their peer set?”