Elon Musk's X (Twitter) shuts down follower growth ad business

X has decided to stop its “Follower Objective” ads in an attempt to enhance the product. Advertisers will not be able to promote their accounts on the platform’s timeline to attract followers.

X, earlier known as Twitter, has decided to no longer allow advertisers to promote their accounts within the platform's timeline to attract new followers. These “Follower Objective” ads are the ones that include a notable “Follow” button in the promoted post. It has been implied that X is looking to push advertisers towards more multimedia-rich ad styles. 

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It should be noted that these promoted accounts or “Follower Objective” ads generate more than USD 100 million in global revenue annually for X.

Promoted accounts are one of the oldest ad formats offered on the platform. These ads appear as text-based posts within the X timeline and feature a "Follow" button for the account promoting them. However, follower ads are static in nature and do not leverage any of the multimedia tools, such as videos that X is trying its hands on. 

This hastened product change comes as a part of a larger effort by X to prioritize new content formats and products, despite their short-term business impact.