Volkswagen Group Pulls Twitter Advertising
Earlier this week, General Motors pulled its Twitter advertising. Now Volkswagen Auto Group is following suit. The company is recommending that its brands pause advertising on Twitter for the time being.
"We are closely monitoring the situation and will decide about next steps depending on its evolvement," Volkswagen Auto Group said in a statement.
Volkswagen Auto Group owns Volkswagen, Seat, Cupra, Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Ducati, and Porsche.
We here at TTAC will be keeping an eye out -- other automakers are likely to pull their advertising from Twitter, at least in part because the platform is now owned by the head of a rival automaker.
There may also be concerns about advertising on the platform if misinformation/disinformation and/or bigotry aren't well moderated. Advertisers tend to be skittish about those sorts of things.
Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter really has changed a lot of things in the space of a week. There's likely more news to come.
[Image: Volkswagen]
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Tim Healey grew up around the auto-parts business and has always had a love for cars — his parents joke his first word was “‘Vette”. Despite this, he wanted to pursue a career in sports writing but he ended up falling semi-accidentally into the automotive-journalism industry, first at Consumer Guide Automotive and later at Web2Carz.com. He also worked as an industry analyst at Mintel Group and freelanced for About.com, CarFax, Vehix.com, High Gear Media, Torque News, FutureCar.com, Cars.com, among others, and of course Vertical Scope sites such as AutoGuide.com, Off-Road.com, and HybridCars.com. He’s an urbanite and as such, doesn’t need a daily driver, but if he had one, it would be compact, sporty, and have a manual transmission.
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"What could go wrong?"
Cheeto IL Duce and clan in the White House for a few decades
I don't think it has much (or anything) to do with Twitter being owned by a rival auto maker. All Companies evaluate all the recipients of their advertising dollars, and decide if they are worth it, or not.
Twitter is a highly unstable Company at the present, so I would also wait and watch. It may effectively implode, or not.
By the way, here's an excellent article on what Musk's intent with Twitter actually is.
Op-ed: What Elon Musk really gets out of owning Twitter (cnbc.com)
And in case anyone's interested in why automakers are thinking twice about Twitter, read this: "Just imagine the information available about Tesla’s automotive competitors — how much they’re spending on advertising, which keywords and demographics they’re targeting, how they engage with customers and fans, how they receive and resolve customer service complaints and more."
Of course, Twitter had all this info before, but Twitter wasn't in the car biz. Elon Musk is, and now he'll have access to his competitors' proprietary information. That's an obvious issue.
The second obvious issue is the legion of Twitter trolls. Setting aside the whole "free speech" thing for a moment, this is a clear business issue. Before Musk owned Twitter, they could basically go on and spread whatever BS about any automaker they felt like trolling - Tesla included - and the only benefit to Twitter was clicks. But now Musk can a) "regulate" the anti-Tesla trolls, and b) institute a "benign neglect" policy on the trolls that target his competitors, and shrug his shoulders while saying "if people want to say ABC Motors runs a pedo ring and sends 20% of its' profits to ISIS training camps, blame the first amendment...and don't buy from ABC Motors, BTW". He wins both ways.
Maybe automakers can't control the narratives that are drawn about them online, but they can choose to not let a direct competitor profit from that. That's why they're pulling out, at least for now. Whether they come back depends on whether Musk turns out to be an honest information broker or not...and my money's on the latter. There's too much financial advantage for Musk to simply let the dialogue about the automotive industry continue uncensored.
I am so sick and tired of these companies pandering to the far left. They are obviously afraid of free speech. First it was GM pulling sponsorship of a PGA event at Doral and now this. I grew up a huge GM fan and have owned several of their cars. I have also owned 3 - GTI, 1 - Passat and 2 - Tiguan. I am done with both companies.
If someone doesn't like something on Twitter or any other platform the choice is simple. DON'T read it. That being said if idiots set up fake accounts to say stupid things their accounts should be deleted.