SpaceX just bought a big ad campaign on Twitter for Starlink

Elon Musk’s aerospace business SpaceX has ordered one of the larger promotional packages available from Twitter, the social media business he just acquired in a $44 billion deal, and He currently holds the position of Managing Director.

The campaign will promote a SpaceX-owned and operated satellite internet service called Starlink on Twitter in Spain and Australia, according to internal filings from the social media business seen by CNBC.

The ad campaign that SpaceX is buying to promote Starlink is called a Twitter “takeover”. When a company buys one of these packages, it typically spends up to $250,000 to get its brand to the top of Twitter’s main timeline for an entire day, according to a current and a former Twitter employee. anonymous because they are not authorized. to speak on behalf of the company.

Users will see Starlink brand messages for the first time three times when they open the Twitter app on the day or days of the planned takeover campaign in Australia and Spain. The campaign, which was purchased last week, is expected to run in the coming days first in Australia then in Spain.

SpaceX doesn’t typically buy large advertising packages from Twitter, current and former employees said.

Starlink uses a constellation of satellites that transmit the internet to paid subscribers, who also need a terminal from SpaceX to access. SpaceX developed Starlink with the goal of providing high-speed internet connectivity to people in locations that are poorly served or not served at all by cable or fiber infrastructure.

Musk is also the CEO of an electric car maker Tesla, in addition to his responsibilities at SpaceX and Twitter. He famously bragged that his car company did not spend money on traditional advertising such as print, radio, television and online display advertising. Instead, Tesla draws headlines from fan blogs, news sites, and buzzes through motor clubs, fan or shareholder events, and customer engagement. social media.

Now, Musk finds himself in a position to sell online advertising as the “Director of Twit,” or more formally, the CEO of Twitter, the major international social media platform. Twitter boasts about 237.8 million daily active users that could be monetized ahead of Musk’s controversial private deal. Musk is on a mission to generate at least half of Twitter’s revenue from subscribers, not just ads.

One campaign, even one as large as a “takeover,” is not enough to make up for the many advertisers who have paused spending on Twitter recently or left the platform during its difficult takeover. Musk.

Companies include Synthetic engineAudi, Volkswagen, General Mills, Pfizer, United Airlines and others have pause of them ad spend on Twitter for the time being, partly in response to the onslaught of hate speech and misinformation on the platform. Advertising giant Interpublic encourage that the customers of its dealers do the same. Twitter previously got about 90% of its revenue from advertising.

When Musk launched and then quickly hung up his paid subscriber badge on Twitter last week, it further shook advertisers’ confidence in the platform. The badge looks like a previous verification blue check mark but only costs the user $7.99 per month. The cheaply obtained blue checkmarks have been used by pranksters and impostors to pose as brands, politicians and celebrities, and to post unflattering and unsavory messages. corpse.

An account created like pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly caused a serious problem on Thursday when it was posted a message that, “we’re excited to announce insulin is now free.” The tweet went viral and persisted on Twitter for at least two hours before it was taken down. Real Eli Lilly account then tweeted: “We apologize to those who received a misleading message from a fake Lilly account.”

Eli Lilly’s stock price decline after the fake tweet was posted, even though the major stock indexes were all positive at the time, with the S&P 500 Its biggest rally in two years. Car maker Tesla led by Musk, SpaceX competitor Lockheed Martin, Senator Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and many others were also impersonated and taken advantage of on the platform.

This weekend, Musk wrote in a tweet, “Twitter drives a huge number of clicks to other websites/apps. Biggest click driver on the Internet by far.” Twitter’s new CEO was immediately rectified by marketing experts and former Twitter employees, and a corrective note was added to his tweet. He later deleted the tweet.

A former Twitter employee, Claire Díaz-Ortiz called him out, writing: “Liar. I worked. @twitter Over 5 years have written 2 books on social media marketing. This is wrong and @twitter know. We never sell it on click, as it has much lower traffic than Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Twitter has other key strengths. (And marketing isn’t just about clicks.”

During a companywide meeting last week, Musk told current Twitter employees that bankruptcy was not an issue, as the business faced an exodus of advertisers and a broad economic downturn. than.