Time for Brands to Make Better Choices
A year ago, Elon Musk famously told Disney’s CEO, Bob Iger, to take a hike and “go f— yourself.” His reason? If anyone’s going to use advertising dollars to “blackmail” him, he wasn’t interested. “Go f— yourself, is that clear? Hey, Bob, if you’re in the audience, that’s how I feel. Don’t advertise.”
This all stemmed from Musk’s controversial posts on X and the subsequent advertiser boycott. Disney decided to pull ads from X, explaining that the platform no longer aligned with the company’s values. Iger emphasised that Disney could not risk damaging its brand by associating with a platform that couldn’t meet its standards. Disney’s move echoed a broader trend of advertisers becoming increasingly selective about where they place their dollars.
But Musk didn’t just accept the backlash – he turned the situation into X’s martyrdom, proclaiming: “What this advertising boycott is going to do is kill the company.” He followed up with a threat: “That’s what everyone on Earth will know. We’ll be gone, and it’ll be because of an advertiser boycott.”
By the end of 2023, it looked like X could lose up to $75 million in ad spend. In the grand scheme of things? Pocket change.
Fast forward to this week, and another tech giant, Meta, is sending a similar message to advertisers: Go f— yourself. Meta’s decision to ditch third-party fact-checking in favour of an X-style “Community Notes” system, where users flag content as false, is a clear signal that brand safety is no longer a priority. This shift may claim to “restore free expression” and “reduce mistakes”, but it’s more likely to open the floodgates for misinformation. Social platforms are becoming increasingly polarised, with misinformation stretching far beyond blatant falsehoods to encompass anything that doesn’t fit within a given ideological bubble.
So, what does this mean for advertisers? If brand safety was ever a priority when deciding where to allocate ad budgets – and if it wasn’t, it really should be – social media is rapidly becoming a minefield. The cost of “reducing censorship” is no longer theoretical. It’s real, and it’s steep. Brands are now faced with a pivotal question: Do you want your campaigns to be associated with platforms that operate without oversight on sensitive issues? Political, medical, and social topics are playing out in the open, without the necessary fact-checking or editorial integrity. And the rise of AI deepfakes makes navigating this landscape even trickier.
As a brand, I wouldn’t want to gamble with that. “Catching less bad stuff” just doesn’t sound reassuring enough to me. The good news for brands? There are better options. The open web is an untapped treasure trove of high-quality publishers who prioritise integrity, factual reporting, and responsible content. There are also better audience identifier solutions that support quality publishers – like Utiq – that prioritise consent and privacy, whilst enabling deterministic addressability of real people and access to high quality content on the open web.
These are the platforms and technologies that foster healthy, informed conversations. They uphold the editorial standards that social platforms have long abandoned. So why aren’t we prioritising them.
Brands, you fuel both social platforms and the open web. It’s time to take responsibility for where your ad budgets are invested. You have a choice. You can continue to fund platforms that erode trust and amplify harmful content, or you can choose platforms that uphold the integrity of information. If you believe that factual accuracy is essential to a healthy democracy – rather than unchecked, misinformed narratives – then the right decision is clear.
The answer has already been given by one side: Go f— yourself. It’s not that difficult to lead, to make the right ad spend choices. The open web is here, ready to welcome your investment with integrity and quality audiences. The ball is in your court.
