Elon Musk's rebranded Twitter is now discounting ad prices to try to recoup its lost flock of advertisers.
Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the social network “X” is now offering some marketers reduced prices on video ads that run alongside trending topics on its “Explore” tab. These ads give brands 24-hour placement on the site's trending topics list, and the company is offering 50% off any new ad buys until the end of the month.
☑️ If You Can’t Woo Them, Threaten Them
But along with the carrot, came a stick.
X also warned advertisers that starting August 7, brands’ accounts will lose their verification status — a gold check mark — if they don't spend enough. And hinted that they won't really do much to police brand impersonators that might come along.
Verification is important for many businesses on the platform because of the bad actors that impersonate and misrepresent brands, as we witnessed during the first few weeks of Musk's takeover.
Now, advertisers must spend at least $1,000 on ads in the previous 30 days or $6,000 on ads in the previous 180 days to keep the verification badge.
🛠️ Elon Deletes Fact-Check About His Erroneous COVID Claim
And, just in case you thought the platform was becoming a little more brand-safe after the renaming, consider this — Elon this week speculated that a college basketball player's collapse from myocarditis was because he got the COVID vaccine. Not just any player, mind you, the son of billionaire NBA legend LeBron James.
Luckily, though, Twitter's crowd-sourced fact-checking system called Community Notes applied a correction to the tweet, quoting sources like the Yale School of Medicine that in fact the risk of myocarditis drops significantly after the vaccine.
Yesterday, mysteriously, that correction had been deleted. Musk's inaccurate tweet, though, is still up.
Image: Canva / X