General Motors has paused paid ads on Twitter, a day after billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk finished $44 billion acquisition of social media platforms.
CNBC is first report GM’s decision. TechCrunch has confirmed the US automaker’s decision.
“We are working with Twitter to understand the direction of their new proprietary platform,” the company said in an emailed statement to TechCrunch. “As a normal business process with a significant change to our media platform, we have paused our paid advertising. Our customer care interactions on Twitter will continue.”
It’s unclear what percentage of GM’s total advertising budget is dedicated to Twitter.
Most, if not all, automakers have a presence on Twitter. Not all of them opt for paid advertising though.
Ford, GM, Stellantis, Porsche, VW and Volvo are just a few of the established automakers, along with newer companies like Rivian that have social media accounts on the platform. Fisker remained on Twitter even after founder and CEO Henrik Fisker deleted his personal account in April following the announcement of the Musk-Twitter deal.
Musk tried to quell advertisers’ fears earlier this week with a note posted on his personal Twitter account about his intended approach to running the social media platform.
“There has been much speculation about why I bought Twitter and my thoughts on advertising,” Musk wrote. “Most of it was wrong.” He went on to write that he believes Twitter has the potential to be a “common digital city square” and that the platform cannot be “a free hell scene for all”.
Musk’s promises may not be enough for GM as GM seeks to compete and even surpassing Tesla in electric vehicle sales.
