Can Linda Yaccarino Lean on Hollywood and Media to Turn Twitter Around?

Disney hasn’t quit Twitter in the wake of Elon Musk’s takeover. In just the past week, ads for “The Little Mermaid,” Hulu’s “The Kardashians” and Pixar’s “Elemental” have appeared in a prime spot on Twitter’s mobile app. That’s given Musk a talking point: Asked at a conference in April about whether advertisers had fled Twitter in the wake of changes that let more unsavory content appear next to their messages, he replied, “Disney would have pulled their ads a long time ago and haven’t.”

His questioner was Linda Yaccarino, then the top sales executive at NBCUniversal and soon to become Musk’s pick as Twitter’s new CEO. Now it’s Yaccarino’s challenge to convince advertisers like Disney — among her peers in the entertainment world — and the other marketers she courted at NBCUniversal to keep spending money on the service, or return if they’d pulled back.

“Linda Yaccarino has impeccable advertising credentials, so if her mandate is to restore trust among the many Twitter advertisers who have walked away from the platform out of fear of Elon Musk’s erratic leadership, she could go a long way in getting the service back on its feet,” said Paul Verna, principal analyst and head of the Advertising and Media Practice at Insider Intelligence.

But Verna also cited the inherent risks of serving under a “capricious” and “authoritarian” boss.

Catching a falling knife

Revenue has plummeted by 50% since Musk bought Twitter last year, he said in March, with many advertisers either pulling out or pulling back while waiting to see how his changes played out. Among their concerns: Musk’s habit of personally posting or amplifying hateful speech. Hollywood, however, seems primed to advertise on Twitter for as long as it’s useful, according to several film marketers who spoke to TheWrap.

That means Yaccarino, who has privately played down the significance of Musk’s noxious tweets, may need to worry less about managing perceptions among marketers and more about keeping them from shifting to newer options like TikTok, where some see the potential for greater returns and more appealing, younger audiences.

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Media industry spending has been particularly volatile on Twitter. HBO, NBCUniversal and Netflix were among the companies reducing spending on Twitter, according to Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. Four of the top 15 media advertisers prior to the acquisition had stopped spending as of April, Sensor Tower said, and six had reduced spending by 75%.

It’s worth noting that Musk’s time at Twitter coincided with a general pull-back on marketing spending by streaming services as they faced pressure from Wall Street to curb their losses or boost profits. HBO parent Warner Bros. Discovery, Disney, NBCUniversal and Netflix didn’t respond to TheWrap’s requests for comment on their media-buying strategies.

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There’s some good news for Yaccarino: Media investment company GroupM, which had labeled Twitter as “high risk” in November, removed that label last month following Yaccarino’s appointment, the Financial Times reported. And Twitter recently began selling ad inventory through ad-tech company InMobi — a move that could help bolster revenue.

The Musk factor

Musk, who ran through several sales leaders in his short time as Twitter’s CEO, doesn’t seem overly keen on making things easy for Yaccarino. In a recent interview with CNBC, he said, “I’ll say what I want to say, and if the consequence of losing that is money, so be it.”

He also noted that Twitter had lost some advertisers because of the Community Notes feature, which allows users to add contextual comments underneath tweets, including advertisements, and made it clear that didn’t bother him.

But Musk is less of an issue for media marketers than the fundamental question of whether advertising on Twitter delivers results. And his changes — including hiring Yaccarino — largely haven’t changed strategies or opinions among several who spoke to TheWrap.

“Some of our clients had expressed slight concern early in the acquisition, but that fervor has died off, and are running as we did prior,” said Mike Daniel, CEO of branding agency Final Cut Media.

Amra & Elma co-founder Amra Beganovich said only 5% of a typical advertising budget she oversees goes into Twitter ads, and even then, that’s mainly to target Millennials, Gen X and Baby Boomers. For younger crowds, she uses Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok.

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“Larger films with hefty budgets” can benefit from using Twitter, said Dan Ortiz, a former director of marketing innovation at Warner Bros. Pictures who now runs his own consulting firm.

He cited “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” and “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” as films likely benefited from using Twitter’s Promoted Trends product, which he described as a “standard” buy these days. Both films beat opening-weekend box office estimates (“Guardians” with $118 million against $114 million projected, and “Mario” with $195 million against $150 million projected).

“While it’s unknown how much the Trends actually translated to ticket sales, I think that this shows that when studio movies come and go big on Twitter, there is still room to win,” Ortiz said, referencing a 2019 Twitter marketing study touting the ad product’s utility. Twitter found in a pre-pandemic survey conducted by Nielsen that “people on Twitter are 31% more likely to go see a film in a theater on opening weekend” than users of competing social products.

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But while Ortiz sees a place for Twitter marketing, he feels the service needed some serious clean-up to be properly brand-friendly.

“Overall, I think that advertising on Twitter is like buying a billboard that overlooks a toxic waste dump,” he said. “I think ad dollars are best spent elsewhere on platforms that have earned advertisers’ trust and have the results to back it up, like TikTok.”

He said Musk’s controversial overhaul of Twitter’s blue checkmark verification program, among other changes, also hurt its ability to be a top-tier advertising solution. He’s waiting to see concrete changes by Yaccarino to ensure Twitter becomes brand-safe.

Even with those brand-safety concerns, “media companies haven’t been among the ones to leave en masse,” said Insider Intelligence’s Verna, even if some have reduced spending. He noted how Yaccarino, when she was still at NBCUniversal, had signaled her friendliness with Musk at an industry event in Miami in April.

Musk’s brash public persona and promise of a lighter hand in content moderation could help him court one slice of the media sector: conservative-leaning publishers. FCM’s Daniel pointed out that advertisers looking to reach conservative audiences might also gravitate to Twitter as a consequence. Tucker Carlson’s recent embrace of Twitter for his new post-Fox News show is the most prominent example of this trend. Yaccarino, whom Fortune described as a “staunch Republican,” served on President Donald Trump’s Council on Sports, Fitness and Nutrition.

But a recent controversy over plans by the Daily Wire, a conservative outlet, to release a film about transgender issues called “What Is a Woman?” on Twitter put the site’s free-speech credentials into question for some. Jeremy Boreing, the Daily Wire’s CEO, said Twitter canceled plans to promote the video and instead restricted its availability because of violations of Twitter’s policies on harassment. Musk called Twitter’s handling of the issue “a mistake by many people” and promised to lift restrictions on the video’s visibility on the service.

Boosting box office, courting conservatives: Is it all enough to make up for the advertising revenue Twitter’s lost? Yaccarino has a lot of ground to regain, with many marketers skeptical of Twitter’s effectiveness even before Musk took it over.

Ortiz, the former Warner Bros. marketer, wondered whether Yaccarino would get time to shine or if she’s en route to a glass cliff. One thing’s clear: She’s now a co-star in an Elon Musk production.

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