Elon Musk's X Sues Advertisers over Alleged 'Massive Advertiser Boycott' after Twitter Takeover

Billionaire Elon Musk reacting- File Phot/Reuters
Billionaire Elon Musk reacting- File Phot/Reuters
TT

Elon Musk's X Sues Advertisers over Alleged 'Massive Advertiser Boycott' after Twitter Takeover

Billionaire Elon Musk reacting- File Phot/Reuters
Billionaire Elon Musk reacting- File Phot/Reuters

Elon Musk's social media platform X has sued a group of advertisers, alleging that a “massive advertiser boycott” deprived the company of billions of dollars in revenue and violated antitrust laws.

The company formerly known as Twitter filed the lawsuit Tuesday in a federal court in Texas against the World Federation of Advertisers and member companies Unilever, Mars, CVS Health and Orsted.

According to Reuters, it accused the advertising group's brand safety initiative, called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media, of helping to coordinate a pause in advertising after Musk bought Twitter for $44 billion in late 2022 and overhauled its staff and policies.

Musk posted about the lawsuit on X on Tuesday, saying “now it is war” after two years of being nice and “getting nothing but empty words.”

X CEO Linda Yaccarino said in a video announcement that the lawsuit stemmed in part from evidence uncovered by the US House Judiciary Committee which she said showed a “group of companies organized a systematic illegal boycott” against X.

The Republican-led committee had a hearing last month looking at whether current laws are “sufficient to deter anticompetitive collusion in online advertising.”

The lawsuit’s allegations center on the early days of Musk’s Twitter takeover and not a more recent dispute with advertisers that came a year later.

In November 2023, about a year after Musk bought the company, a number of advertisers began fleeing X over concerns about their ads showing up next to pro-Nazi content and hate speech on the site in general, with Musk inflaming tensions with his own posts endorsing an antisemitic conspiracy theory.

Musk later said those fleeing advertisers were engaging in “blackmail” and, using a profanity, essentially told them to go away.

The Belgium-based World Federation of Advertisers and representatives for CVS, Orsted, Mars and Unilever didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday.

A top Unilever executive testified at last month's congressional hearing, defending the British consumer goods company's practice of choosing to put ads on platforms that won't harm its brand.

“Unilever, and Unilever alone, controls our advertising spending,” said prepared written remarks by Herrish Patel, president of Unilever USA. “No platform has a right to our advertising dollar.”



Pinterest Plunges as Gloomy Forecast Dampens Revenue Rebound Hopes

Image sharing company Pinterest Inc beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter revenue. (AFP)
Image sharing company Pinterest Inc beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter revenue. (AFP)
TT

Pinterest Plunges as Gloomy Forecast Dampens Revenue Rebound Hopes

Image sharing company Pinterest Inc beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter revenue. (AFP)
Image sharing company Pinterest Inc beat Wall Street estimates for second-quarter revenue. (AFP)

Pinterest shares tumbled more than 12% premarket on Wednesday after a muted third-quarter outlook dashed Wall Street's expectations for a stabilization in its revenues amid a rebound in the digital ad market.

The photo-sharing platform on Tuesday projected current-quarter revenue below analysts' estimates, as it struggles to keep up with the competition from bigger rivals including Meta's Instagram and Facebook and Alphabet .

The digital advertising market is bouncing back from a slump seen in 2022 and early 2023, but pockets of weakness remain and are eating into business at Pinterest, Reuters reported.

San Francisco, California-based Pinterest flagged material weakness in demand from advertisers in the consumer goods space, particularly food and beverage companies, which offset strength in ad spend in the technology and financial services sectors.

"The optics of a lighter (third quarter) guide will not help recently growing ad fears, and some will be concerned that food & beverage pressure — which has been isolated — could spread to other verticals with a potentially softer consumer," J.P. Morgan analyst Doug Anmuth said in a note.

Pinterest's outlook could also spell trouble for other smaller ad players such as SnapChat owner Snap and ad tech firm Trade Desk, analysts said, noting 18% of the gross spend at Trade Desk last year came from food and beverage firms.

Shares of Snap dipped more than 2% premarket on Wednesday, with Trade Desk down 1.5%. Pinterest is set to lose about $2.8 billion in market value, if losses hold.

Pinterest could take yet another hit from the lack of political ads on its platform, unlike Meta and Alphabet which are set to benefit from political advertising in the run-up to the U.S. elections.

"Pinterest... gets no benefit from momentum others will get starting end of August/early September," RBC analysts said, noting that could be a "few hundred" basis points of a headwind for Pinterest.

At least 11 brokerages cut their price targets on Pinterest.