🧠 Food for thought

Implications, context, and why it matters.

The overhaul answers a steep drop in ad spending and pricing

• X is revamping its ad system after advertisers pulled back. Ad revenue fell from US$4.1 billion in 2022 to US$1.94 billion in 2024 1.
• Advertisers now pay far less on X than on rival platforms. The average cost per thousand impressions on X was about US$0.64 in 2026 so far, versus about US$4.93 on Facebook and US$3.12 on TikTok 2.
• Brand safety remains a drag on demand. Only 4% of marketers view ads on X as brand-safe 3. Advertisers also said X’s tools were basic even before the acquisition, and its direct-response results lagged the market 2.

X’s ad reset comes with deeper ties to xAI

• The ad push lines up with X’s growing role inside xAI, which some see as a move away from operating as a standalone media company and toward supplying data for AI development 4.
• In March 2025, xAI, Elon Musk’s AI company, bought X in an all-stock deal. Since then, X has been tightly linked with xAI’s Grok chatbot, an AI assistant 4.
• Ads still bring in a large share of money. They now sit beside subscriptions and data licensing while X is used as a real-time data pipeline for AI model training 4.