# Now that Elon Musk has bought Twitter - now the Pit edition (Part 1) **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [April 25, 2022, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442 "2022-04-25T22:50:17Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 75
**Author:** ![Maserschmidt](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/maserschmidt/32/18829_2.png) [@Maserschmidt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Maserschmidt)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1481 "2022-11-22T21:52:16Z")
> **[Twitter’s Advertising Exodus Accelerates, Despite Outreach From Elon Musk](https://www.wsj.com/articles/twitters-advertising-exodus-accelerates-despite-outreach-from-elon-musk-11668262920)** > > Ad giant Omnicom joins other agencies in recommending brands pause spending, and some companies halt discussions for annual contracts. This might be it. Again, WSJ not paywalled! ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1482 "2022-11-22T21:59:04Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > Also what sort of contractual terms are common in the industry? DO advertisers sign a 1-year contract that’s hard to get out of? Or is it more month to month with termination at will? > > I just have no idea how the ad game commonly runs contractually. I haven’t advertside on twitter in a number of years, but it was set up where you could turn it on or off, or up or down, at any time. It’s probable that larger companies get a better deal if they commit to ad buys, though. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 10:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1483 "2022-11-22T22:41:22Z")
> [@Maserschmidt](#): > > WSJ not paywalled! Paywalled for me. Tried turning off adblocks, anonymous browser window. No dice ---
**Author:** ![naita](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/naita/32/5862_2.png) [@naita](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/naita)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 10:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1484 "2022-11-22T22:46:16Z")
> [@squeegee](#): > > Paywalled for me. Tried turning off adblocks, anonymous browser window. No dice I got a pop up about a subscription, but could continue reading after closing it. ---
**Author:** ![squeegee](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/squeegee/32/14537_2.png) [@squeegee](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squeegee)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1485 "2022-11-22T23:05:19Z")
> [@naita](#): > > I got a pop up about a subscription, but could continue reading after closing it. Windows desktop, chrome and firefox – I get the subscribe box and it’s uncloseable. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 11:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1486 "2022-11-22T23:08:57Z")
Opened for me in Firefox with adblocker on. Another alternative is using a private window whcih sometimes makes a difference ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1487 "2022-11-22T23:15:31Z")
Misleading headline alert! It should say: **Twitter’s Advertising Exodus Accelerates Even Faster After Outreach From Elon Musk** ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 22, 2022, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1488 "2022-11-22T23:37:43Z")
> [@LSLGuy](#): > > An interesting question about advertisers is how much is prepaid on what sort of lead-time? > > [@from that thread](#): > > 2/ Back Twitter (like a lot of digital companies) participates in an event called new fronts. At this event, they sell large chunks of ads for the following year. > > Typically, Twitter sells like ~600-900M in ads at new fronts. That’s guaranteed revenue for following year. > > 3/ This year, they didn’t sell much of anything. > > A coalition called Stop The Deal spent time educating and using media buyers and big advertisers at the event to ask Twitter some basic questions about potential Musk takeover before giving him a guaranteed income for 2023. > > 4/ Media buyers did ask those questions. Twitter had zero answers or assurances, the presentation imploded and ended shockingly early. Twitter from what I understand basically sold almost nothing and locked in extremely little 2023 revenue. > > 5/ This means that instead of heading into 2023 with 15-20% of 2023 already secured as they typically would have, Twitter heads into next year with almost none of that. All because of Musk’s red pilled edgelord approach. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1489 "2022-11-23T00:13:55Z")
I’m going to go out on a limb here and suggest that regardless of what the future holds for Twitter, this period in its history will be a case study in business schools for a long time to come, and none of it will be complementary to Musk. I’ve mentioned before my boundless admiration for Lou Gerstner and his leadership in turning around IBM. (Disclaimer: I’ve been in the tech industry all my life, though never worked for IBM, which I always regarded as more of a marketing organization than a technology company, notwithstanding the innovators at the labs of IBM Research.) My knowledge of Gerstner comes mainly from news stories and from reading his excellent book about his tenure at IBM, _Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?_ That said, I believe his success was the result of his deep understanding of fundamental business principles and his ability to grasp the strengths of IBM, to listen to knowledgeable veterans, and to build support and employee loyalties. One of the first things he did was reverse his predecessor’s attempt to break up IBM into separate businesses aligned with its product lines, recognizing that IBM had unique capabilities in its broad technological expertise to do something very few other businesses were equipped to do: deliver integrated solutions to its customers. Now, imagine for a moment that instead of Gerstner, Elon Musk had been parachuted in to save IBM. Imagine for a moment Elmo’s arrogant, autocratic, pathologically narcissistic and, frankly, deranged world-views, delusional misconceptions, and toxic values trying to do the same thing. Imagine him starting out by firing half the employees and threatening the other half. Imagine the outcome. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1490 "2022-11-23T02:10:57Z")
…this is from an anon source, but nothing in it seems either outlandish or out-of-line with everything else we already know. > [@financial services company](#): > > For background I’m a director at a medium sized b2b tech company (not in finserv anymore) running a team that deploys about $80M in ad spend/year. Twitter was 8-10% of our media mix and we have run cost per engagement (ie download a white paper, register for an event) campaigns successfully since 2016. > > … > > - Performance fell significantly. CPMs didn’t drop but our engagement went way down. > > … > > - Serious brand safety issues. Our organic social and CS teams got dozens of screenshots of our ads next to awful content. Replies to our posts with hardcore antisemitism and adult spam remained up for days even when flagged. > > … > > - Our entire account team turned over multiple times in 2 weeks. We had multiple people (AE, AM, analyst, creative specialist) supporting our account and they all vanished without so much as an email. > > … > > Ads UI is very buggy and login with SSO and 2FA broken. One of my campaign managers logged in last week and found all our paused creatives from the past 6 years had been reactivated. Campaign changes don’t save. These things cost us real money. [https://www.teamblind.com/post/i-told-my-team-to-pause-our-750kmonth-twitter-ads-budget-last-week-4dnbo1Ft](https://www.teamblind.com/post/i-told-my-team-to-pause-our-750kmonth-twitter-ads-budget-last-week-4dnbo1Ft) ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 2:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1491 "2022-11-23T02:40:24Z")
> [@Banquet\_Bear](#): > > …this is from an anon source, but nothing in it seems either outlandish or out-of-line with everything else we already know. I work in advertising; many of my clients spend heavily on social media (though most of them don’t do much on Twitter). What is described in that article makes my skin crawl; if my clients were seeing things like that happening to their ads that we were running/placing for them, they would be screaming at us to pull everything, immediately. ---
**Author:** ![Banquet\_Bear](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/banquet_bear/32/373_2.png) [@Banquet\_Bear](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Banquet_Bear)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 2:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1492 "2022-11-23T02:58:16Z")
> [@kenobi\_65](#): > > What is described in that article makes my skin crawl; if my clients were seeing things like that happening to their ads that we were running/placing for them, they would be screaming at us to pull everything, immediately. …they added this in the comments: > [@financial company](#): > > Forgot another one: our analytics team is finding discrepancies between campaign data from the Twitter Ads API and the UI. Can’t figure out which is correct anymore since we don’t have a team. So they can’t even get accurate metrics any more, and they don’t even have an account manager to help them get it fixed. ---
**Author:** ![PastTense](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pasttense/32/14550_2.png) [@PastTense](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PastTense)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1493 "2022-11-23T03:42:41Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > Unfortunately I can’t relocate the article I read before. Googling news on Twitter that’s more than a few days old is really hard, given the avalanche of developments and analysis that comes out every day. Since you already read the article, the place to find it is not in Google but in your browser history (search your history for Twitter). From that you may be able to recognize the title. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 4:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1494 "2022-11-23T04:32:25Z")
Elon says the advertisers aren’t fleeing because of anything he did - it’s because the wokes are blackmailing him, and that’s why he had no choice but to unban Trump. [![](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiN0B81XEAIxbnZ?format=jpg&name=900x900) ](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FiN0B81XEAIxbnZ?format=jpg&name=900x900) ---
**Author:** ![Cervaise](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cervaise/32/16693_2.png) [@Cervaise](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cervaise)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1495 "2022-11-23T05:33:10Z")
I’m sure that agreement is just as real as his degree in physics. ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 5:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1496 "2022-11-23T05:39:21Z")
If I had Twitter, I’d probably reply something like, “oh my god, Mr. Musk, how awful! Please name names immediately so that we can put pressure on them!” On the other hand, he’d probably just accuse anyone he wanted to, knowing that his fans would harass them without paying the least attention to denials. ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 8:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1497 "2022-11-23T08:35:07Z")
Wow, Musk has completely lost touch with reality. He’s finally gone full-on crazy, apparently experiencing paranoid delusions, and just making things up on the spur of the moment. ---
**Author:** ![Smapti](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/smapti/32/17938_2.png) [@Smapti](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smapti)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 8:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1498 "2022-11-23T08:37:28Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > He’s finally gone full-on crazy, apparently experiencing paranoid delusions, and just making things up on the spur of the moment. I believe he passed that point when he started claiming that some of Twitter’s employees weren’t real people. > **[Elon Musk Was Worried Twitter Was Riddled With “Ghost Employees”](https://www.thedailybeast.com/elon-musk-was-worried-twitter-was-riddled-with-ghost-employees)** > > The “Chief Twit” relented into giving employes their bonuses before letting them go—on the condition they were proven real. ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 11:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1499 "2022-11-23T11:35:27Z")
“I proved beyond a shadow of a doubt with geometric logic that the activist groups _did_ steal my advertising, and I would have produced the evidence if the engineering crew hadn’t all quit…” ---
**Author:** ![wolfpup](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wolfpup/32/10618_2.png) [@wolfpup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wolfpup)\ **Post date:** [November 23, 2022, 11:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442/1500 "2022-11-23T11:56:18Z")
I have so many, many questions for Elmo, it’s hard to even know where to start. - Who are these “political/social” activist groups? Can you name them? - When did you meet with them to make this “deal” that no one ever heard of before? Who were the representatives of this awesome “coalition”? Was any of this “deal” put in writing? Can you show us the contract? - Were you aware that Twitter already had a moderation council responsible for ethical oversight? Why did you feel the need to create one? - Why was it necessary for this mysterious “coalition of political/social activist groups” to blackmail you into promising to establish a moderation council, one which in fact already existed? Isn’t such an independent oversight body fundamental to ethical governance? Why would you need to be blackmailed into doing something ethical? - Most importantly, Elmo, I’m fascinated by how this “coalition of political/social activist groups” has such ironclad control over the advertising industry that they can threaten to pull ads from anyone they don’t like. How do they wield this awesome power? Does it involve Jewish space lasers? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=74) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/now-that-elon-musk-has-bought-twitter-now-the-pit-edition-part-1/963442.md?page=76)