Ubisoft is reportedly suspending all advertising on X, formerly Twitter, not long after site owner Elon Musk denied allegations of anti-semitism.
An Axios newsletter has reported that while Ubisoft did have ads on the social media platform for Assassin’s Creed Nexus VR, the company has opted to stop all advertising. As a representative of Ubisoft told Axios:
“We did have a campaign running. We paused advertising on X.”
The news comes as a host of advertisers have decided to pause advertising on the platform. Apple, IBM, Lionsgate, Disney, and Warner Bros. Discovery have decided to stop advertising on X for the foreseeable future, with other companies also making similar decisions.
This is due to a post that many advertisers perceive as Elon Musk, the current owner of X, endorsing anti-semitic talking points. While replying to a tweet that claimed Jewish communities supported “dialectical hatred against whites”, Musk stated “You have said the actual truth.”
Musk has since backtracked, and attempted to claim he was referring to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), and claimed the group refuses to “criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat”. Musk has provided no evidence to back up his claims, however, and has kept his original reply up on the platform. He has claimed in a post that he is not antisemitic, and that “nothing could be further from the truth.”
Despite claims in the past that the company could be cash-flow positive as soon as the second quarter of 2023, the social media platform has lost almost half of its advertising revenue since the purchase, with more and more advertisers leaving the service over time. Advertising revenue has in fact declined monthly since Musk took over the platform.
Multiple celebrities have also decided to leave the platform since Musk’s comments, with Kiss‘s Gene Simmons and singer-songwriter Neil Young announcing that they plan on leaving the platform for good.