Part of the problem appeared to be decreased spending from big brands that did return, like reportedly Apple. Other dips were linked to X’s decision to partner with adtech companies, splitting ad revenue with Magnite, Google, and PubMatic, Business Insider reported. The CEO of marketing consultancy Ebiquity, Ruben Schreurs, told Business Insider that most of the top 100 global advertisers he works with were still hesitant to invest in X, confirming “no signs of a mass return.”
For X, the ad boycott has tanked revenue for years, even putting X on the brink of bankruptcy, Musk claimed. The billionaire paid $44 billion for the platform, and at the end of 2024, Fidelity estimated that X was worth just $9.4 billion, CNN reported.
But at the start of 2025, analysts predicted that advertisers may return to X to garner political favor with Musk, who remains a senior advisor in the Trump administration. Perhaps more importantly in the short-term, sources also told Bloomberg that X could potentially raise as much as Musk paid—$44 billion—from investors willing to help X pay down its debt to support new payments and video products.
That could put a Band-Aid on X’s financial wounds as Yaccarino attempts to persuade major brands that X isn’t toxic (while X sues some of them) and Musk tries to turn the social media platform once known as Twitter into an “everything app” as ubiquitous in the US as WeChat in China.
MMFA alleges that its research, which shows how toxic X is today, has been stifled by Musk’s suits, but other groups have filled the gap. The Center for Countering Digital Hate has resumed its reporting since defeating X’s lawsuit last March, and, most recently, University of California, Berkeley, researchers conducted a February analysis showing that “hate speech on the social media platform X rose about 50 percent” in the eight months after Musk’s 2022 purchase, which suggests that advertisers had potentially good reason to be spooked by changes at X and that those changes continue to keep them at bay today.
“Musk has continually tried to blame others for this loss in revenue since his takeover,” MMFA’s complaint said, alleging that all three suits were filed to intimidate MMFA “for having dared to publish an article Musk did not like.”