X’s advertiser base is beginning to resemble its pre-Musk era

Digging deeper, the top 10 advertisers on X by U.S. spend in 2026 so far are Comcast (372% y-o-y increase in spend), Amazon (8%), the NFL (166%), xAI (4,587%), Google (175%), Dell (127%), AT&T (226%), NBA (no change in spend), SpaceX (492%) and American Express (469%), per Sensor Tower, though the company declined to share specific ad spend figures. To compare, since the takeover, the advertiser profile shifted mostly to crypto, gambling and political-type brands.

The data appears to validate what X’s global head of advertising, Monique Pintarelli, told Digiday in January, when she said that nearly all of X’s top 100 advertisers had returned to the platform — a claim that subsequently caused quite a stir at the time, partly because it was was based on internal X data. This is the first time a third-party has backed up the point.

Zeno Group’s svp of paid media, Shamsul Chowdhury said that his team has started to see advertiser pick up on X, but for very specific needs.

“Our B2B clients and health & wellness clients are using X as a platform to engage live conversations during events and conferences,” he said. “It’s where their key decision makers are going to hear about the latest and greatest.”

The catch is that these advertisers aren’t spending like it’s the pre-Musk heyday. 

In SpaceX’s S-1 filing to the U.S. SEC — a document which was filed ahead of the company’s reported IPO, which will value it at $1 trillion, the language used points to X as a business still somewhat in recovery mode.

“X has been trending toward becoming a platform that brands spend on during certain tentpole moments (the World Cup, U.S. election years, etc.) but no longer treat as an essential, always-on investment,” said Max Willens, principal analyst at eMarketer. “Bluesky and Threads will each make it very difficult for them to reverse their user growth challenges, and they have work to do when it comes to their automated campaign and creators offerings.”

Chowhury agrees.

“The campaigns are focused around real-time moments versus ever-green campaigns,” he added. “X’s advertising policy changes have also led to a decrease in spend as their new setup doesn’t align with all advertisers’ objectives.”

The filing notes that advertising revenue declined materially in 2024, specifically citing a “decrease in advertising revenue of $595 million,” which the document confirms was “due to the loss of advertising partners for X.” For context, Google owner Alphabet reported $77.3 billion in total ad revenue in the first quarter of the year, meaning it would have taken the company roughly 17 hours to make what X lost in an entire year.

Still, X is attempting to reset the conversation with advertisers. Last month, the company unveiled the biggest overhaul of its ad platform in 20 years, and even the platform’s latest pitch deck leans on its new AI and performance capabilities, to entice more dollars.

“It will be interesting to see if their recently announced ad platform overhaul can do anything to change advertisers’ minds,” said Willens. “That announcement is barely a month old, so it may be a while before there’s something that warrants a fresh look.”

Not that any of that has assuaged X’s efforts to get advertisers spending more. The document talks through the swathe of updates and improvements that X has made to the platform since acquisition, but points out that “we cannot be sure that they will be positively received by users, content creators, or advertisers, or provide positive returns on our investment”.

X did not respond to Digiday’s request for comment.