X on pace for first year of ad revenue growth since Elon Musk bought Twitter in 2022

Elon Musk’s X is on pace for its first year of advertising revenue growth since the billionaire took over Twitter as his ties to the White House help boost business, according to a report.

X is projected to generate $1.31 billion in US advertising sales in 2025 – up 17.5% from the year before, according to Emarketer, Bloomberg reported.

Its global ad sales are estimated to hit $2.26 billion this year, up 16.5%, according to Emarketer.

“Some of the spending growth is really being driven by fear as we’ve seen some of the big advertisers return in an effort to curry favor with the Trump administration,” Jasmine Enberg, principal analyst at Emarketer, told Bloomberg.

X’s business is still smaller than it was before Musk’s acquisition.

The company reported advertising revenue of $4.5 billion in 2021, its final full year as a public company.

Many advertisers fled X after Musk dismantled its content regulation team and pledged to make the site a “free speech” platform.

But other social media giants — like Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta — have since followed suit.

“It’s more of a realization that even if it’s not acceptable, it’s unavoidable,” Enberg said.

Enberg also said some advertisers may be returning to X out of fear of legal action, after Musk sued major advertisers like Lego and Nestlé, accusing them of an advertising boycott campaign.

Other advertisers left the platform in 2023 after the billionaire replied to an antisemitic post on the platform. 

An X account had posted that Jewish communities were pushing “hatred against whites that they claim to want people to stop using against them” and “coming to the disturbing realization that those hordes of minorities that support flooding their country don’t exactly like them too much.”

Musk replied: “You have said the actual truth.”

IBM, Apple and Disney were quick to pause their spending as some ads began to appear next to a flood of antisemitic posts on the platform.

X faced a potential $75 million in advertising revenue losses, according to The New York Times. 

In November 2023, Musk railed at the at The New York Times DealBook summit.

“If someone’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money, go f— yourself,” Musk said.

He then added: “Including Bob,” an apparent reference to Iger, who was in the audience.