Days after Elon Musk’s X announced it was suing an ad industry group over an alleged boycott of its service, the company is ditching ads entirely from its top subscription tier. On Wednesday evening, the X account announced that its Premium+ subscription would now be “fully” ad-free, leading some to question how this change would affect creator earnings, as part of X’s ad revenue share program.
Last year, the company formerly known as Twitter opened up its ad revenue-sharing program to global creators, allowing them to monetize their accounts via the ads served in the replies to their posts. This incentivized creators to post things that generate conversation, like memes and jokes, hot takes, controversial opinions, and more. X did say there would be guardrails on what could be monetized in this way and prevented creators from generating revenue from posts featuring sexual content, violence, criminal activity, gambling, drugs, alcohol and “get-rich schemes,” for example.
Despite the restrictions, the program’s launch had an impact on X’s content, with its algorithmic “For You” feed now serving up more of these viral posts, and some creators initially reporting they had earned revenue in the five- to six-figure range. Other creators took a more cautious approach to X, claiming the platform was still a long way from being a major source of revenue, compared with the opportunities found on other social media apps.
X had said that creators could only share revenue from “verified” users’ organic impressions of ads displayed in the replies to their posts on X, which requires either the Premium or Premium+ subscription.
However, X’s Premium+ was already relatively ad-free, so this latest change may not have as large an impact as creators fear. Before the change, Premium+ subscribers would not see ads in X’s For You timeline, Following timeline, post replies or profiles, though X warned that users may still “occasionally encounter sponsored content outside of X’s standard ad inventory.”
Meanwhile, X’s Premium users (its middle tier) were already seeing 50% fewer ads in the For You and Following timelines.
X owner Elon Musk highlighted the change to the Premium+ subscription in a post where he said, “Your time is worth it.”
The company has had a contentious history with advertisers under Musk’s leadership. Last year he told advertisers fleeing X over his controversial posts to “go f— yourself,” during an onstage interview at the DealBook conference. When advertisers took his advice and chose not to advertise on the platform, Musk sued them, alleging the ad boycott was somehow illegal. Ridiculously, one of the organizations X is now suing, GARM (Global Alliance for Responsible Media), is the same one that X had touted rejoining in July, posting that it was committed to safety and “proud to be a part of the GARM community.” (On Thursday, the World Federation of Advertisers said it would halt GARM’s activities as a result of the lawsuit).
Given its reliance on ad dollars in the near term, X’s ability to turn a profit could be in question. But Musk intends for X to eventually generate revenue in other ways, including by serving as a payments app — a change that is nearing, based on code references found in the web app. Unlike Twitter, Musk’s X also faces a lot of competition from other services, including Meta’s Threads, open source Mastodon, and startups like Bluesky, Spoutible, Spill and others.
