Get marketing news you'll actually want to read
Marketing Brew informs marketing pros of the latest on brand strategy, social media, and ad tech via our weekday newsletter, virtual events, marketing conferences, and digital guides.
Tucker Carlson is moving over to Twitter. The former Fox News host, who was fired by the company in April, said yesterday that he’ll start a new version of his show on Twitter.
Okay, so what does this mean for advertisers? Well, while Carlson might have had one of the most-watched television shows in the country, his often racist and controversial tirades made marketers unsurprisingly uncomfortable, and advertiser boycotts of his program have popped up every couple of years. Prior to his departure, the majority of his show’s top ads were internal Fox promos or commercials from direct-response brands like MyPillow, per iSpot.
Meanwhile, it seems unlikely that Carlson would improve Twitter’s own prospects with Madison Avenue, which have suffered since Elon Musk took the reins last fall. Major brands like General Mills and Pfizer said they’d paused advertising on Twitter when Musk first took over, though some companies—like McDonald’s and Nike—have returned since then, per Ad Age.
Overall, the platform’s ad revenue is forecast to decline 28.6% to $1.68 billion this year, according to Insider Intelligence.
“Interest in advertising on Twitter was already waning, and the biggest hurdle has been brand safety,” Christopher Spong, supervisor of social media and communications at performance marketing agency Collective Measures, told Marketing Brew. Carlson’s increased presence on the platform, Spong said, “may cause advertisers to perceive the platform as less brand safe, even [more] than it was before.”
The leftovers: Marketing Brew’s cursory scroll through Twitter found ads mostly for direct-response brands and smaller companies, but we also spotted ads for Disney Cruise Line, NBC’s Peacock, Shein, and sports-apparel brand Fanatics.