Twitter offers free ads to woo back advertisers: WSJ

Twitter is offering advertisers a new incentive in an attempt to woo brands back to the social media platform, which has seen its ad business deteriorate following Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover, the Wall Street Journal reported. The tech company is dangling free ad space by offering to match advertisers' ad spending up to USD 250,000, according to emails reviewed by the Wall Street Journal. The full USD 500,000 in advertising must run by February 28, the emails said. Twitter didn't respond to a request for comment.

The incentives are the latest effort by the company to get brands to spend on its platform. Recently, Twitter offered advertisers USD 500,000 in free ads as long as they spent at least USD 500,000, WSJ said. Ad buyers told the Wall Street Journal that the incentive could be used to buy promoted tweets that run during Super Bowl week, a key selling period for Twitter. Advertisers in recent years have flocked to Twitter during the Super Bowl to generate buzz around their big game marketing efforts. The Super Bowl is Twitter's biggest revenue day of the year, the Journal has reported.

Twitter is facing financial pressure to lure back the many advertisers that have paused their spending since Musk acquired the company in late October. Advertisers bolted largely because of fear over what they said was Musk's approach to content moderation and concerns that their ads would end up appearing near controversial content, the Journal has reported. Musk said in November that Twitter had suffered "a massive drop in revenue" and was losing USD 4 million a day.

Many big brands including pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, United Airlines Holdings and automakers General Motors and Volkswagen have paused their spending on Twitter, the Journal reported. More than 75 of Twitter's top 100 ad spenders from before Musk's takeover weren't spending on the platform as of the week ending January 8, according to an analysis of data from research firm Sensor Tower.