On the internet, it's business as usual. If one strategy doesn't work, time to switch to the next.
When Twitter was acquired by Elon Musk for an astonishing $44 billion, the world couldn't help but wonder what would the multi-billionaire entrepreneur do with it.
And when he renamed it to X, the world couldn't help itself but agree that things are going to go south pretty quickly.
People started to believe that the name change would mark the end of their beloved Twitter.
While Musk keeps boasting about the performance of the platform, third party reports from both the media and researchers who work based on analysis, said otherwise.
Because things don't kind of work at X, as what it may seem, especially in the finance sector, where the company is seeing a heavy decline in advertisers, X is shifting its strategy.
This time, the Elon Musk-owned platform has begun serving its users with a new ad format and can be considered not transparent and shady, to say the least.
At the For You feed, some users have started seeing the kind of ads they had not previously came across.
The ads in question, don't allow users to comment, like or retweet, because the options are all greyed out.
The ads don't even disclose who is behind the ad. This is because the ads don't display name and handle.
While an avatar is displayed in order to make the ad blend in with other posts on users' feed, the image isn't a profile picture at all. The avatar appears to just be a cropped version of the photo included within the ad itself.
Also, these ads cannot be clicked to open in full tweet view like every other X ad format.
The ads completely lack the three dotted icon button usually present in the upper right hand side of X posts and ads. On a normal post, that button provides users with a slew of options to report a post and mute or block an account.
Without it, there are no ways for a user to report or block these types of ads that are being served to them.
In fact, the ads don't even say that they're ads at all, because they have no “promoted” or “ad” label on them.
The type of content being promoted in the ads that were initially discovered, were spammy, low-quality ads that are typical to clickbait ads found on many content farm websites.
Users who clicked or tapped on the ads will be taken to external websites in a new window.
The presence of these ads is actually quite telling about the state of advertising on Musk's social media platform.
The rollout of these ads also provides the public with a glimpse regarding just how much the company is struggling to attract advertisers.
Reports wondered whether X turned to these chumbox amid the heavily declining direct ad sales the company is seeing.
Since Musk's acquisition of the company, X has struggled to attract advertisers to the platform. Half of the platform's biggest advertisers have stopped running ads shortly after Musk's takeover. And according to newer reports, advertisers who returned are spending up to 90% less on advertising on X than they did prior to Musk acquiring the company.
Another report said that Musk's X is facing declining revenue each and every month since he became the owner of the company.
In order to help with the declining ad revenue, X has turned to partnering with third-parties within the adtech industry to sell available advertising inventory.
And one of which, is Google.
The tech giant has indeed announced that it would be partnering with X to sell programmatic advertising.
Long story short, X allegedly partners with third-parties because of its declining direct advertisers.
Because X is having less direct ad inventory to show to users, it has to resort to third-parties to occupy the empty slots.
The thing is, the third-party ad platforms may not have the ability to properly target users or any brands for that matter during their launch on X. This is why many of the ads aren't relevant, or tend to be spammy.
It's also possible that users have blocked brand accounts that forced X to show third-party ads on them.
It's worth noting that despite being able to tap into a much bigger ad inventory, X is making less money per interaction per ad than what it typically earns through direct sales.