Twitter

Twitter’s troubles under the ownership of Elon Musk continue. The social media giant’s advertising revenues in the U.S. from the beginning of April to May were down 59 percent from the $88 million the platform earned in ad sales during the same period a year prior.

Those findings, published today in the New York Times, were based on an “internal presentation” the Times reported it had obtained.

That internal document also allegedly reported that weekly sales projections at the social site have regularly fallen short, sometimes by as much as 30 percent. The Times further reported that internal documents obtained by the paper forecast that Twitter’s U.S. ad revenues in June would continue declining “at least 56 percent each week compared with a year ago.”

Twitter’s 2023 global ad revenues are expected to be about 28 percent lower than they were in 2022, or around $3 billion compared to the $4.14 billion it accounted for last year, according to findings by research firm Insider Intelligence. Insider Intelligence cited "brand safety issues, confusing policies, and broken technology" as reasons for the decline.

Advertisers are spending markedly less on the site this year ever since Musk took the reins. Vox in March reported that more than half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers have now ceased publishing ads on the site, with many citing an alleged uptick in hate speech as the reason for limiting or outright pulling their ad campaigns from the platform.

Musk purchased Twitter for $44 billion in October and immediately took the company private. In May, mutual funds giant Fidelity pegged Twitter's value at $15 billion, or about a third of what it was worth before Musk took over.

Linda Yaccarino, who was formerly head of advertising at NBCUniversal, was tapped to serve as Twitter’s new CEO. She's expected to begin in her new role today.