Apple’s Advertising Spend on Twitter ⇥ gizmodo.com

I made a mistake. In my piece about the first month of Twitter’s new ownership at the hands of someone who is, at best, an unreliable narrator of his own reality, I did not add the word “alleged” to the phrase “Apple’s reduced advertising spend”. For some unknown reason, I decided that was the one claim I could take literally, even though the person making that claim is, at best, an unreliable narrator of his own reality.

Thomas Germain, Gizmodo:

The data contradicts Musk’s claims that the iPhone maker “mostly stopped advertising on Twitter.” Apple’s Twitter advertising purchases actually grew from October to November, Pathmatics’ research showed. Apple spent $1,005,784 on Twitter ads in the first 28 days of November, already more than that company’s October budget of $988,523, according to the analytics firm.

Yesterday, Musk said during a Twitter Spaces broadcast that Apple had “fully resumed” its advertising spend, just days after he claimed it had “mostly stopped” its Twitter ads. Neither of these claims is believable and I regret the error on my part.

Update: Ryan Mac, Mike Isaac, and Kate Conger of the New York Times report Apple paused its Twitter ad spending on November 19 following the mass murder at Club Q. This pause was over a week before Musk complained, and Pathmatics’ analysis indicates Apple’s spending from November 1 through when it paused spending was still higher than that of the previous month.