Top firm advises pausing Twitter ads after Musk takeover

One of the top four largest advertising companies — IPG's Mediabrands — is advising its clients to suspend their ads on Twitter for the next week due to trust and safety concerns under the leadership of its new CEO Elon Musk, according to a person with direct knowledge of the decision.

This marks the largest group of advertisers calling for a halt in business with Twitter since Musk took over last Thursday.

Advertising is Twitter's lifeblood — making up 90% of revenue. Musk has said the platform's "commitment to brand safety is unchanged" since he took over five days ago. But over the past weekend, he tweeted — and then deleted — a false story about Paul Pelosi's attacker, touching off a flurry of controversy.

It's not just Musk's tweets that are causing problems. Some analysts have seen a surge in hate speech and misinformation since he took over — including a 500 percent increase in racial slurs, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute, an independent center that tracks online trends. And Twitter's head of trust and safety said they've removed 1,500 accounts that spread hateful content since Saturday.

It's the kind of dramatic uptick that could drive lucrative business away. "When big advertisers leave over brand safety concerns, no one really wants the dubious honor of replacing them," said Nandini Jammi, co-founder of the watchdog group Check My Ads Institute.

Mediabrands — the media arm of the advertising behemoth IPG — sent a letter to clients Monday instructing them to stop advertising on Twitter until Nov. 7, the person said. The group's high-profile clients include American Express, Coca-Cola, Johnson & Johnson, Levi Strauss & Co., and Spotify and the company manages more than $40 billion in advertising spend globally. The person declined to comment on whether any of the brands have suspended ads yet.

Katie Harbath, a former public policy director at Facebook, said Musk is now realizing how complicated it is to manage a free flow of ideas and content while ensuring advertisers remain on the platform.

"Welcome to this world. This is what we all told you this was going to be like," she said. "This is all mind-boggling to me. For somebody that is smart, to seemingly be so naive."

Musk had previously told advertisers he didn't want the platform to become a "free-for-all hellscape" and wanted it to be "warm and welcoming to all."

Mediabrands recommended its clients stop advertising on Twitter "until we have more clarity on Twitter's plans for trust and safety and organizational capabilities to deliver on those commitments," the person said.

The controversy rocking Twitter is drawing notice on Capitol Hill as well.

"Free speech does not include spreading misinformation to downplay political violence," said Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), who also is chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

The Mediabrands' outreach to clients came the same day that the Global Alliance for Responsible Media posted an open letter to Twitter — which called for improving safety on the platform for advertisers. GARM is a cross-industry initiative formed by the World Federation of Advertisers to address harmful content on digital media platforms.

Sarah Personette, Twitter's former chief customer officer, tweeted that she resigned on Friday. Earlier, she tweeted on Monday that Twitter takes its partnership with GARM "seriously," while tagging Musk.

Also, on Tuesday, 40 civil society groups wrote an open letter to the CEOs of Twitter's 20 top advertisers — including Amazon, Apple, Google and Meta — calling on them to stop advertising on Twitter globally if Musk continues to do things that "undermine brand safety and community standards by gutting content moderation."

Additionally, a dozen high-end brands represented by luxury advertising firm GroupM said they wanted to stop advertising on Twitter if Donald Trump rejoined the platform, GroupM told the Wall Street Journal last Friday. General Motors also announced last Friday it also was temporarily stopping advertising on Twitter.

Twitter did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Mediabrand's letter.

Alfred Ng contributed to reporting