Elon Musk’s aerospace business SpaceX has ordered one of the larger advertising packages available from Twitter, the social media business he just acquired in a $44 billion deal and where he now serves as CEO.
The campaign will promote SpaceX’s owned-and-operated satellite internet service, called Starlink, on Twitter in Spain and Australia, according to internal records of the social media business seen by CNBC.
The ad campaign that SpaceX is buying to promote Starlink is called Twitter Takeover. When a company buys one of these packages, they typically spend upwards of $250,000 to keep their brand at the top of the main Twitter timeline for an entire day.
According to a current and a former Twitter employee, who asked to remain anonymous because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the company, users should see the Starlink brand message the first three times they see a planned acquisition in Australia and Spain. See the campaign.
The campaign, which was purchased last week, was scheduled to run first in Australia and then in Spain in the coming days, as SpaceX does not typically buy large advertising packages from Twitter, current and former employees said.
Starlink uses a cluster of satellites that beam internet to paying customers, who also need to obtain a terminal from SpaceX to access it. SpaceX found Starlink poorly serviced by cable or fiber optic infrastructure. Developed with the goal of providing high-speed Internet connectivity to people with or without service.
The Starlink service in Ukraine has provided vital connectivity to the country’s military and some civilians since a brutal Russian invasion destroyed communications infrastructure there, while SpaceX covered part of the cost of providing the service in Ukraine. Elon Musk later noted how the donation hurt his company’s profit margins.
Elon Musk is the CEO of electric vehicle maker Tesla in addition to his responsibilities at SpaceX and Twitter. He famously claimed that his car company does not spend any money on traditional advertising such as print radio television and online display ads.
Tesla instead draws headlines from fan blog news sites and generates buzz through motor club fan or shareholder events and social media engagement. Elon Musk now describes himself as Twitter’s chief tweeter, or more formally as CEO, selling online advertising. Which remains a leading international social media platform.
Prior to Elon Musk’s controversial tech-private deal, Twitter had approximately 237.8 million monetizable daily active users. Musk is on a mission to generate at least half of Twitter’s revenue from customers, not just ads. A campaign, even one as big as the acquisition, hasn’t been enough for many advertisers, who recently stopped spending on Twitter or fled the platform during Musk’s rocky takeover.
Companies including General Motors Audi Volkswagen General Mills Pfizer United Airlines and others have temporarily halted their advertising spending on Twitter as the platform responded to an onslaught of hate speech and misinformation. Advertising giant Interpublic Group recommended that its agencies’ clients should do the same to Twitter which previously derived about 90% of its revenue from advertising.
When Musk launched and promptly suspended a paid subscriber badge on Twitter last week, it further shook advertisers’ confidence in the platform. The badge previously looked like a verification blue check mark, but only cost users $7.99 per month.
Blue check marks, cheaply acquired by counterfeiters and counterfeiters, were used to impersonate politicians and celebrities as politicians and celebrities and to post unsubstantiated and false messages, created in the likeness of the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly one account said on Thursday.
When she posted a message that we are excited to announce that she is now insulin-free, the tweet went viral and remained on Twitter for at least two hours before it was removed, with the original Eli Lilly account later Tweeted. We apologize to anyone who was misled by the fake Lily account.
Eli Lilly’s share price dropped sharply after the fake tweet was posted, although major stock indexes were positive at the time. As the S&P 500 experienced its biggest rally in two years, Musk-led automaker Tesla SpaceX competitor Lockheed Martin Sen. Ed Markey and several others also impersonated and bullied on stage.