By Charles Peralo
5 billion dollars was Twitter’s 2021 revenue, 221 million dollars was its loss in 2021. A 4.3% loss.
Twitter has been profitable only two years in the 14 years it has existed, having lost over a billion dollars in 2020, while Facebook made 29 billion in profit.
There’s a lot of excitement for Elon Musk buying Twitter, because of this hope he will reduce censorship online.
Here’s why I don’t think that happens. 89% of Twitter’s revenue is off of ads. 11% is data licensing.
Advertising
The best example I could use of how lack of censorship impacts ads is Tucker Carlson.
Tucker Carlson averages 4.3 million viewers per episode, making it the most viewed talk show currently on cable.
Carlson isn’t the most paid guy though, where it’s reported he has a salary of 10 million dollars a year, which is also attached to a book deal he has with Fox.
Comparing that, Ellen Degeneres made 50 million per year off Ellen. Whoopi Goldberg makes 8 million off the View per year, Joy Behar is 7 million and the other hosts bring salaries to over 22 million.
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The View averages 2,4 million views. Ellen was averaging 1.4 million towards the end, but had 2,6 million prior.
Tucker Carlson was the clear winner, but his show isn’t very profitable. Reason is who his advertisers are.
1. My Pillow
2. AliveCor
3. Relaxium
4. Lear Capital
5. Nutrisystem
6. Pure TalkUSA
7. Granite Store 8. Relief Factor
9. Coventry Direct
10. Qunel
These are the top ten most advertised products on Tucker Carlson. Comparing that, these are the biggest cable ad buyers and how much they spend.
1. Procter & Gamble-933 million
2. Berkshire Hathaway-696m
3. T Mobile-611m
4. Pepsi-583m
5. AT&T-560m
6. Amazon-532m
7. AbbVie-466m 8. Yum Brands-462m
9. Disney-458m
10. Comcast-380m
Tucker Carlson has content that alienates people, doing things such as joking about Pete Buttigieg breastfeeding and the product of that is larger brands don’t want the association.
Tucker Carlson ends up getting the Disney’s of the world dropping him and had one point 20% of his ads were the MyPillow guy.
This is the issue with censor free social media. It makes no money.
In summer 2020, there was complaints over Facebook not censoring content, which lead to an ad industry boycott.
- Coca Cola
- Ford
- Starbucks
- Unilever
- 50+ others
All larger name brand companies, which due to complaints pulled from Facebook in a 30 day ad ban, which some didn’t return to.
Just the result of Coca Cola leaving caused a stock drop, where Mark Zuckerberg personally lost 7 billion dollars, just on the Coke announcement.
If those companies stayed out for a year, Facebook would have lost over a billion dollars in revenue, just from that censorship issue.
This is why I don’t believe Elon Musk ultimately makes Twitter this censorship free dream.
Even Elon’s first tweet post completing the deal was directed towards advertisers, asking them not to pull with changes on censorship.
Even the first thing, which is Kanye West, where Elon Musk responded saying he wasn’t responsible for Kanye returning and that choice was made pre buyout, Kanye West since his visibly anti semetic rant had the following companies drop him.
Adidas
Chase Bank
Footlocker
Balenciaga
TJ Max
Madame Tussauds
Peloton
All of these brands, due to the controversy pulled from Kanye, which in Adidas case, they abandoned over 250 million in profit yearly, due to the fear of reputation damage off him.
Just the action of Kanye West returning to Twitter makes it possible they lose ad revenue, with brands saying they’ll buy more Instagram, YouTube or Snapchat ads, instead of Twitter.
Which it sounds insane to think about, but there’s no reason large advertisers can’t do a rapid industry boycott and Twitter loses over a billion in revenue, effectively bankrupting the company.
It should also be made clear, there’s no censorship free social media.
Gab and Parlor, which both launched and marketed as censorship free and were removed in the app stores for not censoring holocaust deniers and whites supremacist, still have had to ban people for going to far.
Elon Musk might improve somethings, but I doubt many banned people get brought back or policies change much over the ad issues.
