Jeep, Mars Inc. among advertisers to leave Twitter

Yahoo Finance Live breaks down the latest round of advertisers to pullout their exposure on Twitter under Elon Musk's leadership.

Video transcript

DAVE BRIGGS: Twitter is seeing an exodus of advertisers under Elon Musk. More than 1/3 of the blue bird's top 100 marketers have not advertised on the social media platform in the past two weeks. That's according to the Washington Post. 14 of the top 50 advertisers have stopped since Elon took over, including these on your screen, like Jeep and Mars Candy, who have not appeared since at least November 7. Mars telling the Post they learned of some, quote, "significant brand safety and suitability incidents" that impacted their brand.

He was just messing around, but Stephen King, the famed author, Rachelle, tweeted, pretty soon they're going to have nobody left but My Pillow. Now, credit Elon Musk for actually retweeting that tweet and owning the criticism. But the question is this. Moving forward, how is he going to get those advertisers back? What's going to make those massive global corporations feel comfortable advertising next to the likes of perhaps President Trump, Kanye West, and others who he's invited back?

RACHELLE AKUFFO: I mean, we know that when it came to Eli Lilly, theirs was a case of being impersonated about giving away free insulin. But the damage that did, imagine the patients who were really relying on these things. So I think that alone made a lot of companies sort of step back. And the fact that we really don't have a plan-- essentially, Elon Musk seems to throw out ideas and really pulls the general public. Perhaps, he should be pulling advertisers before he makes some of these decisions.

For example, one of his tweets that should Twitter offer a general amnesty to suspended accounts, provided they have not broken the law or engaged in egregious spat? But is that something that you want to perhaps give to the general public as an option or advertisers, who are going to pay to have their content next to these things? I think some of these conversations really don't need to be for everyone to chime in on because you saw what happened when he was like, hey, should I buy Twitter? Now he owns Twitter. Does he want it? We're not even sure at this point.

DAVE BRIGGS: Right, letting the masses decide such incredible, impactful decisions is probably not the right way to go about it. And by the way, that vote overwhelmingly yes. I think at last check, a million and a half people that voted, and it's like a 75/25 proposition, with people saying yes, give them the blanket amnesty.

And we have to remember, Elon has to remember, the ad environment digitally is very difficult for even those who aren't dangerous, who are Google, who are Meta, for example. So how does he get them back with a potential recession looming? I don't know. I think it's going to be a really long haul. He's going to have to profit from subscriptions at some point, which they've paused as well.

RACHELLE AKUFFO: That's a fair point, and purse strings are certainly tightening.