SAN FRANCISCO: After Elon Musk’s outburst against big advertisers like Disney this week, X is reportedly aiming to tap small and medium businesses (SMBs) to offset the advertising loss from big companies.
A new report by The Financial Times has claimed X will now turn to SMBs to shore up revenue after Musk angered big brands by supporting antisemitic content.
“Small and medium businesses are a very significant engine that we have definitely underplayed for a long time," a company spokesperson was quoted as saying.
“It was always part of the plan, now we will go even further with it,” the company added.
Musk has warned that the loss of big advertisers would spell the end of X.
The X owner stunned the world when he told advertisers to "go f*** yourself" earlier this week, after some top companies pulled advertising on his platform over his endorsement of anti-Semitism.
Speaking at The New York Times' DealBook Summit, when Andrew Ross Sorkin asked the X owner about pauses in advertising, Musk replied: "Don't advertise."
"You don't want them to advertise?" Sorkin asked him.
"If somebody's going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money? Go f*** yourself," Musk said.
"What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company. And the whole world will know that those advertisers killed the company, and we will document it in great detail," he told the audience.
Musk also apologised for what he called his "dumbest" ever social media post on Semitism.
Meanwhile, X CEO Linda Yaccarino said that the platform is enabling an information independence that's uncomfortable for some people.
“We're a platform that allows people to make their own decisions. And here’s my perspective when it comes to advertising: X is standing at a unique and amazing intersection of Free Speech and Main Street — and the X community is powerful and is here to welcome you,” she posted on X.
More than 100 brands have halted their ads, and the company is at risk of losing $75 million by the end of the year, according to reports.