Twitter will roll out new controls as early as next week to allow businesses to prevent their ads from appearing above or below tweets containing certain keywords, the social media platform told advertisers in an email on Thursday.
The new control is part of it twitters Efforts to calm and lure back advertisers who have been pulling ads from the platform since it was bought by a billionaire in October Elon Muskamid reports from civil rights groups that hate speech has increased since the takeover and following the recovery of several suspended or banned accounts.
Twitter generates nearly 90 percent of its revenue from selling digital ads. Musk recently attributed a “massive drop in sales” to civil rights organizations that have pressured brands to pause their Twitter ads.
Speaking recently to an advertising industry group, a Twitter official said the platform is considering bringing its content moderators, many of whom are contracted through third-party providers, internally, according to a source familiar with the remarks.
The Twitter representative said that adding content moderators to Twitter would allow the platform to invest more in moderation for non-English languages, the source said.
Thursday’s email to advertisers, verified by Reuters, said a revamped version of Twitter’s subscription service, dubbed Twitter Blue, would be rolling out on Friday.
Subscription allows accounts to get a verified tick. Individual accounts will receive a blue tick, while gold and gray ticks denote business and government accounts, the email said.
The subscription price is US$7 (about Rs.500) per month on web and US$11 (about Rs.800) per month on Apple devices, the email said.
Twitter, which has lost many members of its communications team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Twitter also told advertisers that it had removed ads from profiles mentioned in a Washington Post article on Tuesday that reported ads had appeared on the Twitter accounts of white nationalists.
snapwho owns the photo messaging app Snapchathas halted its advertising on Twitter while it investigates the issue, a spokesman told Reuters.
The accounts are not part of “amnesty restores,” Twitter said in the email, which referenced Musk’s tweet last month that Twitter would reinstate suspended accounts that haven’t broken the law.
“We will not re-enable bad actors, spam accounts, and users engaged in criminal/illegal activities,” Twitter’s announcement to advertisers read.
Twitter, which has lost many members of its communications team, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
© Thomson Reuters 2022
