In early November, Elon Musk hosted an hour-long Twitter Spaces session about the future of advertising on the platform along with two (now former) Twitter executives, Robin Wheeler and Yoel Roth.
Also present was David Cohen, CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau, who was invited as a representative of Ad Land to pepper Musk (so to speak) with the industry’s burning questions.
The first question Cohen asked Musk was how to differentiate between “Elon Musk the person” and “Elon Musk the brand.” The lines between the two “seem particularly blurry,” Cohen says on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks. “When Elon tweets, is that an official Twitter stance or isn’t it?”
Musk’s answer was typically … Musky. “If I say that Twitter is doing something, I mean Twitter, and if I say ‘I,’ I mean me, and if there’s any confusion about the two, then I would just ask me on Twitter, basically,” Musk responded. (He proceeded to use the word “we” to refer to both himself and Twitter throughout the rest of the interview.)
Fair enough, perhaps. “But I think the industry is still struggling with that distinction,” says Cohen, whose DM inbox was flooded with tens of thousands of messages during the Spaces session.
But what about the most burning question of all: Should advertisers still spend on Twitter?
Brands are justifiably nervous for many reasons, including concerns about brand safety and campaign performance. At the same time, though, Cohen says, “there aren’t many other things in our ecosystem like Twitter, the real-time adjacent feedback, it’s very hard to replicate that, so there is certainly a benefit to being there.”
In short, he says, “it’s up to every brand to make that decision on their own.”
Also in this episode: Reactions to the FTC’s proposed rulemaking process on commercial surveillance, ad spend trends for 2023, marketing in the metaverse, retail media real talk and the art of calligraphy.
For more articles featuring David Cohen, click here.
