Sorrell tells ad land to calm down about Elon Musk’s Twitter
Despite the pandemonium caused by Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter last week, there is one media mogul who seems largely unfazed by the news.
S4 Capital chief and former WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell underplayed the $44bn takeover and said that Facebook owner Meta was the one to watch when it came to the future of online advertising.
“Meta is the issue,” Sorrell told Bloomberg TV whilst speaking at the Web Summit conference in Lisbon this week. “Snap and Twitter, they’re not exactly rounding errors, but each of those two platforms is about one per cent of global digital media”.
However, he did state that clients want certainty and clarity in an ad landscape – something that he said had been lacking over the past week from the Tesla founder.
Musk has already made a number of dramatic changes since taking over the reins of the social media firm.
Not only has he culled the majority of the senior leadership team, including Twitter chief Parag Agrawal, but he has also announced a number of projects, including plans to offer a premium $8 a month subscription service.
There are also concerns amongst advertisers that the entrepreneur may also plan to loosen content moderation rules, building a ‘digital town square’ style.
Hargreaves Lansdown Susannah Streeter previously warned that Musk would face a huge challenge of maintaining and building revenue, given the fact that controversial opinions were usually unpalatable to advertisers.
In an email sent to a media agency this week and seen by the Financial Times, Twitter pleaded with brands to “bear with us as we move through this transition”.
The eccentric billionaire tried to soothe advertisers’ concerns himself by tweeting a poll this week asking if the community would support free speech or political correctness.
It’s not just advertisers that are fretting, but also the 7,500 strong Twitter workforce.
According to reports from the FT yesterday, the new owner is now planning to cull half of its headcount and cutting the wholly flexible work policy that the company has.
Twitter were unavailable to comment on these reports when requested by City PM