Apple has resumed advertising on X for the first time since pausing ads more than a year ago, following the trend of major advertising “pausing” their spending on Elon Musk’s platform due supposedly to concerns about “brand safety.”
MacRumors reports that Apple, one of the world’s most influential tech giants, has recently started advertising on X once again after a year-long hiatus. The company had previously joined a host of other major advertisers, including Amazon, Disney, Comcast, Warner Bros. Discovery, and IBM, in pulling their ads from the platform in November 2023. This decision was largely attributed to concerns surrounding so-called brand safety.
The move to resume advertising on X was first spotted by MacRumors on Wednesday, with the Apple and AppleTV accounts running promotions for Safari’s privacy features and the Apple TV Plus show Severance, respectively. Reports from January had suggested that the iPhone maker was debating whether to test ads on X again.
Apple’s decision to return to advertising on X follows a significant shift in the relationship between Big Tech and Elon Musk since President Donald Trump took office. Despite X’s approach to content moderation remaining largely unchanged, many brands that had previously pulled their ads have since returned to the platform. Amazon, in particular, is planning to “significantly” increase its ad spending on X, as Breitbart News previously reported.
This development comes in the wake of X filing an antitrust lawsuit against a group of major advertisers (which Apple is not a part of) in August 2024. The lawsuit alleges that these advertisers held an “illegal boycott” and conspired to “collectively withhold billions of dollars in advertising revenue” from the company.
As Breitbart News reported:
The lawsuit alleges that the World Federation of Advertisers, concerned about X potentially straying from its brand safety initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM), orchestrated a large-scale pause in advertising on the platform. As a result, at least 18 GARM-affiliated advertisers reportedly stopped buying ads on X either in the U.S. or globally in the weeks following Musk’s acquisition of the company in November 2022. Other GARM members are said to have “substantially reduced” their ad spending on the platform during this period.
X’s lawyers argue that the alleged boycott has deprived the company of billions of dollars in advertising revenue, with the ramifications continuing to be felt years later. They contend that in a competitive market, social media platforms should have the freedom to set their own brand safety standards that are optimal for their specific platform, without the collective action of advertisers dictating these standards and overriding consumer interests. This especially applies to woke companies trying to force social media platforms to toe the same political line.
Read more at MacRumors here.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship.
