Twitter owner Elon Musk said in a tweet last Saturday that his platform continues to have a negative cash flow due to a “heavy debt load” and an estimated 50% drop in advertising revenue.
We’re still negative cash flow, due to ~50% drop in advertising revenue plus heavy debt load. Need to reach positive cash flow before we have the luxury of anything else.
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 15, 2023
Last April, the multibillionaire declared that Twitter was “roughly breaking even” with many of its advertisers returning.
However, a report from The New York Times’ contradicted Musk’s statements. According to its research, Twitter’s U.S. advertising revenue from the start of April to the first week of May went down 59% from 2022.
A study from Insider Intelligence also suggests that Twitter’s global ad revenue this year is estimated to be 28% lower than the previous year.
Additionally, data from Sensor Tower revealed that only 43% of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers from September continued to advertise on the platform as of April, with many more opting out in the following months.
Twitter Boosts Creator Earnings Despite Drop in Revenue
Despite its struggles to stabilize revenue, the company launched a program last Thursday that shares a cut of its ad revenue with its top-performing creators.
"We’re expanding our creator monetization offering to include ads revenue sharing for creators. This means that creators can get a share in ad revenue, starting in the replies to their posts. This is part of our effort to help people earn a living directly on Twitter,” the company tweeted last Friday.
In order to earn from the program, users must first subscribe to Twitter Blue, the platform’s paid subscription service.