Amazon increases ad spending on X

After pulling much of its advertising over a year ago, Amazon is reportedly increasing ad spending on X. Both Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and X owner Elon Musk were seen at Trump’s inauguration earlier in January.

The Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon Chief Executive Andy Jassy was involved in the decision, which the outlet said "could result in the company spending significantly more on X." A person familiar with the matter told the outlet that Apple has also had discussions in recent weeks regarding testing out ads on the platform.

Ad buyers said that while some brands are returning to X, their spending levels are still well below that seen before Musk bought the company, then known as Twitter, in 2022.

Musk and Bezos were seen mingling at Trump’s inaugural events, with Musk posting a meme ahead of the inauguration, writing, "Step Brothers is the perfect meme for Jeff Bezos and me," including a gif of the two main characters saying "did we just become best friends?"

Advertisers pulled ads from X after Media Matters published a story claiming that Amazon and other companies had advertising appearing alongside content with "white supremacist hashtags." Musk sued the left-wing organization, saying in a statement ahead of the lawsuit’s filing, "To manipulate the public and advertisers, Media Matters created an alternate account and curated the posts and advertising appearing on the account's timeline to misinform advertisers about the placement of their posts. These contrived experiences could be applied to any platform."

"Once they curated their feed, they repeatedly refreshed their timelines to find a rare instance of ads serving next to the content they chose to follow. Our logs indicate that they forced a scenario resulting in 13 times the number of ads served compared to the median ads served to an X user."

Ad revenue began to slow after Musk took over X in late 2022 "due to activist groups pressuring advertisers, even though nothing has changed with content moderation and we did everything we could to appease the activists. Extremely messed up! They’re trying to destroy free speech in America," Musk wrote at the time. Leftist leaders wrote and co-signed an open letter to advertisers to "suspend Twitter ads globally if Musk can’t commit to enforcing the brand- and community-safety rules already on the platform’s books."

In late 2023, Musk issued a message to advertisers pulling out from the platform at the New York Times Dealbook Summit, stating simply, "Go f*ck yourself."