Elon Musk’s endorsement of an antisemitic conspiracy — and a report showing big brands’ ads on pro-Nazi content — has resulted in lost ad revenue dollars for X from Apple, Disney, and now celebrity socialite Paris Hilton.
Just last month, X CEO Linda Yaccarino announced a partnership with Hilton. According to Yaccarino, Hilton and her company 11:11 were going to launch several new media initiatives on the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter.
“The queen of pop culture, music, business, and TV is #Sliving on X,” Yaccarino posted on October 2. “@ParisHilton welcome to the @X family, we’re excited to launch an official partnership with you and your next-gen media company 11:11. Together we’re going to create a launchpad for new initiatives in video and live video, live commerce, Spaces, and so much more. Let’s do this!!”
On Tuesday evening, November 21, 11:11 Media president and COO Bruce Gersh told CNN that the company was suspending its ads on X due to the issues the platform is currently embroiled in.
“11:11 Media made the decision to immediately pull the campaign from the platform,” Gersh said.
While her company has suspended its ad campaigns, the status of Hilton’s overall reported two-year partnership with X that was just announced last month remains unclear.
The Hilton partnership was a big deal for X and its CEO Linda Yaccarino, who Musk handpicked specifically to bring advertisers back to the platform. X has been bleeding ad revenue since Musk acquired the company last year.
Yaccarino announced the Hilton partnership during a tumultuous period for the company. The Hilton announcement came just days after Yaccarino’s critically panned appearance at Vox Media’s Code 2023 tech conference. At the event, Yaccarino shared that X was losing millions of daily active users. She also said that most of X’s top advertisers were coming back, a claim that Musk had refuted weeks earlier when he blamed the ADL for X’s 60 percent drop in ad revenue.
Hilton’s 11:11 Media joins a growing list of advertisers that have suspended ad campaigns on X in the past week. On Monday, X sued Media Matters, the media watchdog that published the report that discovered ads from brands like Comcast on pro-Nazi content.
However, companies continue to join IBM, Disney, Apple, and others in pulling their ads from X. Over the last few days alone, Sony, Fox Sports, and Ubisoft have paused their ad campaigns after an NBC News report found some of their ads appearing on antisemitic pages and search results on X.