Elon Musk. So we've got the Super Bowl coming up and Uh Elon Musk. Apparently, according to the Wall Street Journal has asked the Twitter staff to basically do whatever they can to sell Uh advertising for the Super Bowl. In the past, the Super Bowl has been a really big weekend that Friday Saturday Sunday uh for the Uh for the advertisers on on Twitter And so apparently in an email, the company is offering basically 250 000 in free ad space to advertisers that spend at least 250 000 on the platform.

So it's sort of like a buy one get one. And it's interesting because obviously we know after Elon took over, there were a lot of brands that were very uncertain about the future of Twitter and there's been a lot of a pullback from advertising on Twitter because of that. Some of that might have been because of macros, some of that may have been because of uh, the the uncertainty involved in Uh potentially advertising on Musk's platform that at the time everyone in the mainstream media was suggest thing was going to implode. Of course, since then, Elon Musk has laid off uh, somewhere around over 60 percent of the company 2500 approximately individuals left of the company, down from about 7 500.

So that's actually closer to 67 percent of people gone over at Twitter. Uh, now. Uh, Elon has uh, recently apparently sent out an email. This was, according to uh, the Informer They released a report saying Elon sent an email out, kind of giving you a little bit of insight into his business practices, asking all employees to list what they had accomplished in January and what other additional issues that they're working on, trying to solve or recommendations they have for the company going forward.

I Think it's kind of interesting. It's kind of like a so what did you get done in the last month that you were paid? It's kind of an interesting argument. If you're working at Twitter and you're watching this, you probably want to start documenting all the good stuff you're doing. Uh, Anyway, going back to Uh, the Wall Street Journal over here Wall Street Journal Uh is suggesting here that there are ramping up their Super Bowl pitches to advertisers offering a last minute deal on one of the most high profile big game ad packages according to an email viewed by The Wall Street Journal.

It's also telling advertisers that the number of conversations on the platform about the Super Bowl and uh, the National Football League is up significantly from a year earlier. Now, personally I always somewhat uh, question when I hear stuff like that because I'm like by what measures but hey, you know what? whatever they got to do to encourage people to come back and support Twitter Probably not a bad thing, especially since at one point there were suggestions that up to 70 percent of advertisers had left Twitter and by another measure, up to 90 percent of a reduction was noticed in ad traffic or not sure I shouldn't say Ad traffic. Regular traffic to the advertising domain that Twitter uses, implying that potentially 90 percent fewer ads were actually being signed up for in November and December Who knows. But Elon Musk has also given us a little bit more insight, which actually comes as kind of supportive, especially to Uh Tesla stock since basically Elon Musk used Tesla stock as his piggy bank to finance the purchase of Twitter.

But you do have some good news today. for Twitter it's and it's uh or for Tesla and it's actually two-fold it. It's obviously the win by Elon, Musk and Tesla and the 420 funding secured lawsuit where now they have removed potentially up to 6 to 12 billion dollars of liability. That would have been a big issue if Elon or Tesla had to contribute to this.

Obviously the expectation was that that would have gotten negotiated down, but that overhang is now gone. but the Twitter overhang of Elon Musk having to sell Tesla shares to be able to support this company he was saying was trending towards bankruptcy may now starting to be getting removed. And that's because Elon Musk here says in a reply to the Wall Street Journal Uh, and this is uh, the Wall Street Journal trial. Uh uh, a piece here where the Wall Street Journal tweeted out the win he love Oscar applies The last three months were extremely tough as he had to save Twitter from bankruptcy while also fulfilling his essential roles at Tesla and SpaceX.

He wouldn't wish that pain on anyone, he says. He goes on to say that Twitter still has challenges, but it's now trending to break. Even if we keep at it, public support is much appreciated. So in other words, not yet saved.

Not yet clearly in the black, but things are trending towards a better Direction than they previously were. He further clarified this by saying thank you for supporting Twitter and uh, we've got a response here. Somebody asked was this worse than 2008 or production Hell 2008 was the beginning of the uh uh, essentially the launch of manufacturing for Teslas via the Roadster uh while at the same time being stuck in the Uh in essentially the recession so funding becomes extremely challenging. 2018 represented the production hell of ramping the model 3 while at the same time Elon Musk was dealing with SEC inquiries over his funding secured tweets so uh, some responses here from Elon giving a little bit more clarity, but so far this sounds very good and keep in mind Elon Musk did sell about 24 billion dollars of Tesla stock in 2022.

that 24 billion dollars of sales pressure offset? That's sales pressure, right? We already know this. Hopefully this is redundant to you, but for those of you who don't know this I Want to reiterate Elon's 24 billion dollars in 2022 sales offset 15 billion dollars of retail hoddle buying. So net retail buying. was 15 billion.

His sales were 24 billion so no duh. The stock moved into a downtrend, which was then easily shortable. Now, of course some people are like Kevin the volumes higher. That's not not how hodler someone who was a hodler Now selling works.

Okay, it has nothing to do with the volume. The volume is sort of like the waves at the top of the ocean. A hodler coming out and selling is like draining the stock from the bottom. It's very different from just day volume.

But anyway, a little bit more insight here. Uh, we have uh Twitter talking about potentially charging up to a thousand dollars a month for verification for businesses. This is because now Elon Musk is uh, allowing companies to get a this sort of gold check mark like the Wall Street Journal has right here. This gold check mark is uh, very different from, uh, sort of the regular blue check mark which you could either buy or you get because you're maybe notable or not.

So uh, it used to be that if there we go uh, verified account. This is a legacy verified account. It may or may not be notable is sort of the check mark. the old school check mark.

Of course you can now pay for check mark which just says you have a check mark if you're you know, a Twitter blue subscriber. But the other thing that's interesting is now, uh, let me see if Martin has it I believe he does. Uh, let's see here. Nope.

can't seem to get him very quickly here. But anyway, basically what they've done on Twitter now is they've allowed companies to create this uh orange check mark for businesses and then you could get a sort of a little like tea if you work for Tesla next to it and so you kind of get double verified so you can get a verification. You can get a business badge as well. and the neat thing about the business badge is you can click on the business badge and it actually links back to that corporate verify the corporate Twitter page.

So it's kind of a way that individuals can now show yes I do actually work for what company I say I work for So maybe you can actually get a little bit more transparency rather than just somebody's bio being updated saying that they work for a certain company and the idea there is in part to a provide more more transparency which we know Elon's a fan of at least that's what he tells us. but it's also in some regards trying to prevent what people like George Santos are able to pull off where they can blatantly lie through their teeth about their resume like going to a university that they never actually enrolled at or working for Credit Suisse or Citibank which they never actually worked at yet somehow still get elected to Congress. so to some degree, actually being able to verify that somebody actually works for the business they say they work for, as well as being potentially a verified individual are some of the strategies Twitter is working on to not only provide more transparency, but also increase. Revenue A business might have the interest in having this additional verification, maybe because as they're advertising they, they want to seem more credible which I would imagine if you spend enough money on.

Advertising They probably throw in the orange check marks as well as the individual check marks that you get for people who work at the business, but it's kind of neat. Uh, it's uh, these are these are pretty neat and Innovative things that we we haven't actually seen Twitter change that much until Elon came around and now we have view counts. Uh, at least some potential reduction in spam. although there's still plenty of spam.

Obviously the blue check mark changed the orange check mark, change the employee verification changes. So there are changes happening. A company is somehow operating with 67 percent less staff and so far Twitter hasn't gone down So good job! Elon Mainstream media must be a little upset about that because they were pretty convinced this was going to implode. But anyway, several brands are thinking about returning to the platform, thanks in part to the Super Bowl and cheaper ad rates, as well as the release of a new tool.

Look at that already getting new advertising tools! It's pretty smart release of a new tool that allows advertisers to create a list of up to 1 000 keywords and avoid having their ads appear above or below tweets containing those uh words uh, So in in other words, you can now create negative keywords, which is something that Google Advertising Platform has let you do for quite a while. but apparently Twitter says not so. Thanks for catching uh Twitter up! Elon This is good anyway. Beverage Company and a financial services firm interviewed by The Wall Street Journal recently began advertising again.

Twitter is also offering a three-day Super Bowl weekend package for 250 000 which apparently is considered a fire sale. Wow, that is very expensive. Uh, then apparently in January the company offered free ad space on promoted tweet campaigns to get people to come back apparently on Super Bowl weekend which is the uh, it's actually not the Friday Saturday Sunday I said that wrong Super Bowl weekends apparently is actually for advertising purposes deemed to be Saturday Sunday Monday which makes sense because you're flanking the Super Bowl on the left and right since that's on Sunday Uh, and so you do sort of the Highlight advertising on Monday and you do the prep advertising on Saturday and then of course, big game day advertising on Sunday. But anyway, many advertisers including Pfizer United Airlines General Motors have paused spending on Twitter since Elon Musk took over in October I Can't help but Wonder Like how wonderful it just at least seems that Pfizer stopped advertising and on Twitter and presumably Pfizer still advertises on things like YouTube and other platforms.

And when project Veritas does a video critically uh, or potentially even going as far as exposing Pfizer on certain topics. uh, Pfizer those videos from Project Veritas get removed from places like YouTube, but they get to stay on places like Twitter and now Pfizer isn't not advertising on Twitter This is an interesting link. It's probably causation with a correlation, but but you know, wouldn't surprise me if there's at least some link like that still going on. especially since uh, you know companies uh, companies are seeing their ad Revenue decline even Google In fact, if we jump over that at that for a moment, Google's uh, YouTube declined now for two quarters in a row, which is a little bit shocking that uh, YouTube ads are declining.

This was the last or the second to last report ending September we saw YouTube was down 1.85 from a year ago and that same thing was seen in the last earnings report from Google which I do not have handy at the moment. but we saw the same kind of decline at Google for Google ads. so it makes you wonder if oh, here we go, if at all Twitter is experiencing any of the same difficulties that uh, that the other advertisers are probably even more so then yeah, you know you're you're seeing some year over year declines. Look at this: Google ads actually down now 7.8 So you've seen an acceleration from first of all, strong growth to then negative growth and now a lot of negative growth.

So things got even worse in the quarter ending. Uh in December for uh for advertisers here. Kind of a red flag for advertisers, by the way. Yeah, American Express told us the same thing American Express and their earnings call warned that advertising spending was declining at, uh, small businesses.

Now what I think is so interesting about you get? Uh, yeah, here we go. Uh, the commercial services and spending by U.S small and medium-sized Enterprise costs customers represents the majority of Commercial Services However, that segment was the slowest growing customer segment, and small business enterprises have recently started to slow down spending in certain categories like digital advertising and I Find it very interesting that they talk about this sort of recent change of a Slowdown in digital advertising, somewhat implying that that Q4 was really a little bit of a larger headwind for a lot of advertising companies. probably. frankly, uh, why you had Elon in November and December Essentially complaining hey, you know we are trending towards BK over here.

Fortunately though, it seems like things are getting better. So uh, over here it says Twitter Has been telling some brands that advertisers are returning the platform. For those that paused post acquisition, we have seen 30 plus return. Uh, that's great.

Uh, more than 70 of Twitter's top 100 AD Spenders the four Musk took over were apparently not advertising on the platform according to sensor Tower as of January 29th. So that's still potentially 70 of the big boys not being there comparing to the 90 percent uh, potential reduction in advertising in the fourth quarter. Uh, at least at one point. Uh, Anyway, they give some examples here of uh, 30 seconds of AD time can cost somewhere around seven million dollars for an actual Super Bowl TV ad and uh, are making this comparison to companies using Twitter But uh, look, the good news is clear that even through the advertising challenges that the entire advertising space is seeing uh, whether it's a TV or potentially connected TV we'll see what happens when we get uh, trade desk numbers, uh, advertising challenges at Netflix and low take rates on those ads.

At the same time as all of this sort of pain is happening in the ad space, it actually looks like you've got Elon Musk getting the company to at least Trend towards profitability. Probably not yet profitable, but Trend towards profitability. And remember, he suggested and some like to try to say that this is his promise, but he says that he does not need to sell any Tesla stock in 2023. Now uh, that is what he says.

What he does could be different. My suspicion is if he would have lost the lawsuit, he would have been right back to unfortunately having sold. So fortunately that lawsuit overhang is gone and he says he might not even have to sell any stock in 2024. and maybe he doesn't have to sell until 2025..

though that uh, that is a less of a guarantee as more time goes on. so we'll see. but paying attention to Twitter As a Tesla investor, it's a surprisingly important Endeavor so something to pay attention to.