Twitter ‘unsafe to advertise brands’

One of the world’s biggest advertising agencies has told clients to suspend their spending on the social network due to safety risks since Elon Musk’s takeover.

Elon Musk’s efforts to reassure businesses that Twitter is safe for their brands have suffered another setback after one of the world’s largest advertising agencies advised clients to suspend their spending.

Omnicom, an American marketing conglomerate with more than 5000 corporate clients, warned of the risk to companies’ public profiles on the social network. They should halt activity there “in the short term”, it recommended.

Changes to Twitter after Musk’s $44bn ($65.7bn) takeover have caused problems for companies. Twitter was forced to pause a scheme in which users were given “verified” status for a fee of $8 a month after fake accounts took advantage. When a newly verified account posing as Eli Lilly, the pharmaceuticals group, tweeted that “insulin is now free”, the actual business was forced to clarify that it was not.

Twitter was forced to pause a scheme in which users were given ‘verified’ status for a fee of $8 a month after fake accounts took advantage. Picture: AFP

Musk, 51, said at the weekend that Twitter’s subscription service would “probably” return at the end of the week. The platform has been experimenting with an “official” mark for paying advertisers.

In a memo entitled “Twitter – continued brand safety concerns”, obtained by The Verge technology website, Omnicom described “evidence that the risk to our clients’ brand safety has risen sharply to a level most would find unacceptable”.

The company, which has clients including Apple and McDonald’s, advised “pausing activity” on Twitter until it could “prove it has reintroduced safeguards to an acceptable level and has regained control of its environment”.

Musk, meanwhile, is set to defend his record $83.6bn pay package at Tesla in court this week. His remuneration as chief executive of the automotive group amounts to the “largest compensation grant in human history”, lawyers for an investor argue.

Lawyers for Musk insisted his pay package, put in place in 2018, has driven extraordinary returns for other Tesla shareholders by setting “demanding” terms for the tycoon. The trial starts on Monday at Delaware’s court of chancery, where Musk’s lawyers spent months wrangling with Twitter as he sought to withdraw from his takeover.

– The Times