Even if you’ve never been on Twitter, you’ve heard about Tesla founder Elon Musk buying Twitter. The overall cultural impact of the deal is a story in itself, but let’s look instead at what this $44 billion acquisition means for us advertisers. 

 

Twitter’s ad business never reached the lucrative levels of Facebook or YouTube. For context, Twitter has about 206 million active users, compared to Facebook’s 1.93 billion and YouTube’s 315.12 million. There’s also the fact that advertising on Twitter rarely offered the ROI that most brands look for in a digital campaign. 

 

Since Musk took over Twitter, he’s been clear of his intent to transition most users into paid subscribers — and those subscribers are demanding an ad-free experience. We’ve seen this with YouTube Red and other paid models. So what does this mean for brands? Time to think bigger. The days of the tried-and-true display ad may be coming to an end. What are you doing to make sure your audience remembers you? 

 

At UPBrand, we’ve been thinking a lot about the evolution of digital advertising. We see the digital world getting smaller and smaller — so our strategies have to adapt. We’re already helping clients get more personal and more targeted with their campaigns. So if and when the paywalls start going up, we’ll be ready.