X will never be able to pay even remotely what YouTube pays. Brands and companies have no interest in advertising here anymore
Elon will succeed at this about as much as he succeeded at getting rid of the bots he promised to eliminate.
Since X was taken over by Elon Musk, serious advertisers have been leaving in large numbers. This is documented.
X’s annual revenue fell from roughly 5 billion USD in 2021 to about 2.5 billion USD in 2024, a decline of around 50 %. This year probably even worse. Advertising still makes up most of the revenue, but the quality of advertisers has collapsed.
Major global brands including Apple, Disney, IBM, Warner Bros Discovery, Comcast, Paramount and Sony have paused or effectively exited advertising on X. European companies followed. Swiss brands such as UBS and Swiss Post, and German firms like Aldi and Volkswagen, also withdrew. These are core premium advertisers.
MediaRadar data shows brand ad spend on X down about 35 % over 3 years. Individual cuts are extreme. Disney reduced spend by over 98 %. Apple fell from more than 20 million USD to well under 1 million USD. AT&T dropped from over 30 million USD to near zero.
Outside the U.S., the situation is even worse. X has little relevance for international brand budgets. What remains is mostly political advertising, performance marketing, crypto projects and smaller advertisers with low CPMs.
By comparison, YouTube generated around 31.7 billion USD in ad revenue in 2023 alone, (two years ago!) more than 12 times X’s total revenue. YouTube can pay creators because premium advertisers are still there. X cannot.
The reason is simple. Brands and companies have no interest in advertising here anymore, and that should be a clear signal.
