Twitter, TikTok and Taboola Grow Ad Spend as Economy Scrambles Media Mix

Last week, Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter has suffered “a massive drop in revenue, due to activist groups pressuring advertisers" to leave the platform. But new data from corporate spending platform Ramp, which analyzes $10 billion a year in transaction volume, shows that some companies have increased their spend on Twitter since Musk took over. According to transaction data from Ramp’s corporate credit card customers, in the seven days after Oct. 27, when Musk officially bought the company, spend on Twitter increased by 17.9% from the seven days prior to Oct. 27. That was greater than the increases of 3.4% on Google and nearly 8% on Facebook. Twitter also increased its percentage of total ad spend since Musk’s ownership, increasing its share of the media mix by 6% week over week. Meanwhile, Google dropped by 7% and Facebook declined by 17%, Ramp found. Ramp notes that Twitter transaction volume has been actually relatively stable over the last 12 months. The data is only a small sliver of the advertising market. Other estimates, such as those from advertising analytics firm Pathmatics, show ad spend as relatively constant in the first week of Musk’s ownership compared to the week before. But it’s evidence that, despite the billionaire’s blustering claims, and big advertisers like General Mills announcing a pause in spend on the platform, many advertisers are still conducting business as usual in a climate of uncertainty. The data also shows that advertisers are turning to alternate channels in choppy economic waters. Ramp’s data on Twitter follows a larger report from the company on third-quarter transactions, which found that the average company spent 14.9% less on digital ads. The data draws from approximately only 12,000 customers, a majority of whom are small businesses, though spend stats are weighted toward mid-market and enterprise clients, said Alex Song, Ramp's head of finance and capital markets. Elon Musk Fails to Answer Brands’ Questions in Private Meetings TikTok holds on to its upwards trajectory TikTok continues to weather the economic storm. Transaction volume for TikTok rose 6.5% quarter over quarter, Ramp found. That’s been a steady upward trajectory; in the second quarter, spend on TikTok nearly doubled, per Ramp. Meanwhile, the share of ad spend on Facebook dropped while the share of ad spend on Google only increased by 4.3%. Katya Constantine, who runs direct-to-consumer agency DigiShopGirl, noted a similar pattern among her clients' third-quarter ad spend, with TikTok spend increasing significantly from the prior quarter, Facebook spend staying flat (though down 50% year over year) and Google decreasing 13%. Both Google and Facebook reported disappointing third-quarter earnings, though Constantine said it is more Facebook that is truly losing market share. Though she believes the company, still a digital advertising titan, can make up for those losses. “Facebook’s drop has stabilized and now they are rebalancing,” she said of the shifting media mix. “Facebook is doing a lot of innovation within their ad platform,” like providing better tech for advertisers. While TikTok, and to some extent, Twitter, have been beneficiaries of these shifts, not all smaller social platforms are increasing market share. The Ramp data reported Reddit and Snapchat as the media channels experiencing the biggest declines in transaction volume, falling by 66.9% and 45.7%, respectively. Constantine noted among her clients that Pinterest spend has significantly declined and Snap has stayed flat, albeit from a significantly lower amount than last year. A surprising finding to come out of Ramp's data was Taboola, the content recommendation ad-tech platform, saw the most growth of any ad channel, with transaction volume rising by 20.2%. This was probably from a small base, the company still makes up less than 1% of total ad spend on Ramp cards, and didn’t command enough spend to be included in the media mix pie chart in last quarter’s report.