In wake of Meta moderation shift, advertisers have accepted new status quo: brand safety is a myth

Meta’s changes technically don’t touch paid ads. But organic content still dictates the broader tone of the platform — and what users engage with inevitably influences the ad ecosystem. Brand safety tools can only do so much when the overall environment becomes more volatile. And yet, what choice do marketers really have? Pulling spend rarely moves the needle, and staying put means accepting that brand safety is less about control — and more about calculated risk.

Which explains the collective shrug at Meta’s latest moderation rollback. No boycott. No grandstanding CMOs. Just quiet resignation that this is the cost of doing business online.

Take Danone North America, for instance. Despite “considering the safety and reputation of our trusted brands,” a spokesperson told Digiday in an email that it would “remain active on platforms including Meta and TikTok.”

Advertisers have made their peace with the new settlement.

“We have not seen any reduced or altered spend,” said Brian Levine, director of social media, Converge Marketing Agency, which numbers AT&T and auto recovery service AAA among its clients. At M&C Saatchi Performance, bar a single client that paused spend on Facebook and Instagram, paid social investments have been left unchanged, according to Christopher Khan, director of search and social. ”They’re hesitant to just turn off the channel or make reductions,” he said.

No real shock there. But it does indicate a shift in the relationship between Meta and brand advertisers. And it shows that the red lines put in place by marketers in recent years are being pushed back.

Meta’s pivot may have turned that irony into a full blown spectacle, but it was X — under Elon Musk — that first brought it into focus. 

No sooner had the self-proclaimed free-speech absolutist taken over in 2022 than he offloaded fact checking and moderation duties onto the platform’s own users. Advertisers cited this as a key reason and fled.

“There is a very clear perception amongst our team and clients that the risk is much higher at X,” said Sam Huston, svp of creative and media at agency Dept, who added that none of its clients now spend on the platform.

The numbers tell the story. 

Among the 100 top-spending advertisers X had in 2022, 72 had left by September 2024, according to data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. In a Kantar survey of 1,000 marketers published that month, 26% of marketers reported plans to reduce ad spend on X in 2025. 

But ad dollars never stay on the sidelines for too long.

A new crop of brands have taken their place. Sensor Tower’s data showed that 52 of X’s top-spending advertisers weren’t advertising prior to October 2022. Leading that pack is Temu, which accounted for 3% of total ad spend on X in 2024. Similarly, data from MediaRadar found the number of X’s advertisers increased 15% in 2024 to 23,000; 70% of those began advertising with the platform after its takeover.

And yet, slowly but surely, the old guard is starting to trickle back. While some agency buyers told Digiday they still considered the platform off-limits, several others indicated that it was no longer seen as a clear threat to a client’s brand safety guidelines.

The reasons for this return are varied, but one thing’s certain: it’s not because X suddenly got safer. The platform’s policies haven’t changed much in the last two years — unlike Musk’s profile as the self-styled “first bro” of president Donald Trump.

Which only reinforces the point: brand safety isn’t about control — it’s about adapting. Platforms shift, policies bend and advertisers adjust accordingly. Given enough time, even the boldest red lines start to blur. 

Barry Salus, media director at McKinney, told Digiday he expected X to be “front and center” during discussions with clients as they planned out future paid activity, as a direct result of Meta’s new policies.

“Now you’re seeing the conversation shift,” he said. “As we’re working with new clients, they are focusing purely on results and trying to take politics out of it, and [on] really what’s best for the business and where your customers are.”

Whether those conversations translate into real ad dollars for X is another story. So far, whatever big advertisers are spending appears to be minimal at best. And even without the political baggage of its owner, X’s financial outlook remains bleak — MediaRadar estimated that ad spend on X exceeded $1.4 billion last year, a 28% fall on 2023. 

“Our user growth is stagnant, revenue is unimpressive, and we’re barely breaking even,” Musk wrote to X staffers in a January email.

It’s not clear how much Musk cares about X’s commercial fortunes so much as the influence it gives him. Zuckerberg, on the other hand, knows Meta’s business isn’t really dependent on big brands — and that’s exactly why he doesn’t have to be influenced by them. Spokespersons for X and Meta didn’t immediately return requests for comment.

One brand marketer, who exchanged candor for anonymity, told Digiday that despite “general frustrations” over the policy change, they’d stay the course with their paid spending.

Meta’s platforms, they said, were a “necessary evil.”

Kimeko McCoy, Michael Bürgi and Seb Joseph contributed reporting to this story.