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Comment by tourmalinetaco | Hacker News Reader

The question I have is how many advertisers that pulled out, that actively posted on Twitter under a brand account, ceased posting under said account and/or deleted it outright? I would assume if Twitter is too toxic of a platform to advertise on, then they would want to cease brand association entirely no?

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My understanding is that Twitter allows for username reuse, so a major company deleting their account would be an even greater brand risk than just letting it go idle.

(But even if the account doesn’t go idle: I think there’s a significant difference in kind between a company’s account being generally active and paying for advertising to appear next to increasingly extreme and negative content.)

These are effectively different spaces, all major corporations will have accounts on Twitter and post stuff so you're in good company, or at least amongst a broad variety of users.

Sponsored content would be side by side with (last time I checked) crypto scams and porn. There's actually a risk of devaluing your brand by promoting it alongside tat.

> Sponsored content would be side by side with (last time I checked) crypto scams and porn. There's actually a risk of devaluing your brand by promoting it alongside tat.

Are you saying X/Twitter doesn't let you choose whether or not your ad is displayed with adult content? Or doesn't let you choose content categories to run it against or not?

I thought most advertising platforms let advertisers choose which content categories to run (or not run) the ad for–e.g. "I only want this ad displayed on content related to motor vehicles, fishing or firearms". Or even keywords – e.g. "don't run this ad on any content mentioning [competitor_name]"

Is being placed next to other random content a real risk? Or is it just portrayed like that by a vocal minority that likes to deplatform? I don’t see why a random person outside of HN or political activism would associate two different pieces of content on the same page.

It's not random though, it's the determined content for Twitter's target marketing demographics. Wrestling had this issue for years trying to attract new advertisers. The ones that were already there were firmly for less in demand demographics that more greatly represented wrestling's historical viewership and their presence had the effect of making it a less attractive option for higher status brands.

A random person outside of HN mightn't consciously notice anything, a marketer absolutely will and they'll notice how all these kinds of factors will impact the efficacy of a campaign actually increasing sales rather than just being viewed

I don't really see how this would be that relevant. A corporate account making announcements and ads are pretty different in content, cost, perception, etc.

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