Former NBCUniversal ad chief Linda Yaccarino’s hiring as CEO in June instilled some degree of confidence among advertisers, but the rampant outbreaks of disturbing content on X have further gutted advertisers’ trust, three sources told Adweek. 

Following discussions with senior leadership across its 75 clients, “the absolute overwhelming majority of our brand advertisers are incredibly concerned with the ongoing misinformation,” Schreurs said. Audi and Sony are both Ebiquity clients—the former ceased organic posting on X in November last year, while Sony has continued.

Adweek has contacted X for a response.

EU’s involvement a ‘key driver of concern’

The platform’s struggle to curb rampant misinformation has brand leaders even more cautious to return.

“Most brand partners hoped that Yaccarino would bring some maturity back to the platform,” Christopher Spong, associate director of social media and communications at media agency Collective Measures, told Adweek. “It quickly became clear that Musk was still running the show.”

Meanwhile, European regulators last week made a formal request for information from Musk’s platform concerning its procedures and practices to address hate speech, dissemination of misinformation and the presence of violent terrorist content pertaining to the Israel-Hamas war.

The flagging by the EU was a “key driver of immediate concern” for brand partners at Ebiquity. 

In response, Yaccarino sent a letter to the EU outlining the platform’s efforts to curb war-related disinformation, including “redistributing resources” and “refocusing internal teams.” X has introduced new enhancements to its Community Notes, a crowdsourced fact-checking feature and has taken action to remove hundreds of Hamas-affiliated accounts.

However, per NewsGuard’s analysis, Community Notes failed to successfully debunk misinformation 68% of the time. Only 79 of the 250 posts that perpetuated wartime misinformation were flagged by the platform with Community Notes.