Twitter will implement new ad placement controls and this is all we should know about
Twitter Inc. will launch new controls next week that will allow businesses to prevent their ads from appearing above or below tweets containing specific keywords, the social media platform announced in an email to advertisers.
The new controls are part of a Twitter effort to reassure and entice advertisers who have pulled ads from the platform since it was purchased in October by billionaire Elon Musk, amid reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has increased since the acquisition and the reinstatement of several banned or suspended accounts. Twitter generates nearly 90% of its revenue from the sale of digital advertisements. Musk recently blamed a "massive drop in revenue" on civil rights groups that pushed brands to pause their Twitter ads.
According to a source familiar with the remarks, during a call with an advertising industry group, a Twitter representative said the platform was considering bringing its content moderators, many of whom are contracted through third-party vendors, in-house. Bringing content moderators in-house would allow the platform to invest more in moderation for non-English languages. The remarks come after Ella Irwin, Twitter's new head of trust and safety told Reuters that the platform would rely more heavily on automated content moderation.
Irwin also stated that Twitter's recent layoffs, which resulted in a 50% reduction in staff, had no significant impact on its moderation team or those working on critical issues such as child safety.
According to an email sent to advertisers on Thursday and reviewed by Reuters, a revamped version of Twitter's subscription service called Twitter Blue will go live on Friday. Accounts will be able to receive a verified check mark as a result of the subscription. Individual accounts will be denoted by a blue check, while business and government accounts will be denoted by gold and grey check marks, according to the email. According to the email, the subscription fee will be US$7 per month on the web and US$11 per month on Apple devices.
Twitter also informed advertisers that it had removed ads from profiles mentioned in a Washington Post article on Tuesday, which claimed that ads had appeared on white nationalist Twitter accounts. According to Reuters, Snap Inc, which owns the photo messaging app Snapchat, has paused its advertising on Twitter while it investigates the problem. Twitter's email stated that the accounts were not part of "amnesty reinstatements," referring to Musk's tweet last month that Twitter would reinstate suspended accounts that had not broken the law. In a note to advertisers, Twitter stated, "We will not reinstate bad actors, spam accounts, or users who have engaged in criminal/illegal activity." Even though it has lost many members of its communications team, Twitter did not respond immediately to a request for comment.