Elon Musk: Give me ad dollars or I'll sue

X, the social media platform formerly known as Twitter, is leaning into a coercive new advertising strategy under Elon Musk and CEO Linda Yaccarino: pressure, threats, and lawsuits.

That’s the picture painted in a bombshell Wall Street Journal report published Wednesday. The report describes how Musk and Yaccarino led an aggressive campaign to rescue X’s declining ad business by threatening to sue companies that refused to spend money on the platform.

Desperate attempt to shore up ailing ad business

Verizon, which hadn’t advertised on X since 2022, pledged at least $10 million this year after receiving a legal threat. Ralph Lauren also agreed to return after being threatened with a lawsuit. In all, at least six companies rejoined the platform after similar pressure tactics, according to the report. Some deals included binding ad-spend commitments, while others included soft or non-binding targets struck under duress.

Behind the scenes, X lawyers reportedly warned advertisers they could be added to an ongoing lawsuit alleging an illegal ad boycott. X first filed that suit last August, targeting the World Federation of Advertisers and several major brands. Unilever, Amazon’s Twitch unit, and Lego were all among them. Some companies, including Unilever, were later dropped from the suit after signing new ad deals.

The campaign marks an extraordinary and punitive effort to revive the platform’s revenue. After Musk’s $44 billion takeover in late 2022, user engagement is reported to have sharply declined. Advertisers fled in droves amid chaos inside the company and loosened content moderation standards. Yaccarino, a former NBCUniversal ad executive, has been attempting to lure those advertisers back with brand-safety tools and new content deals, including NFL and NBA highlights. But the threats suggest serious desperation.

At one point, a lawyer for X demanded that Pinterest commit to its pre-Musk ad spend for two years — or be sued. Pinterest declined, having found that its ads were more effective when run in other venues. X then followed through on its legal threat, naming Pinterest in the complaint.

“Advertisers are understandably concerned about the litigious streak of Musk’s X interpreted by some as ‘invest with us, or else,’” Ruben Schreurs, CEO of ad consultancy Ebiquity, told the Journal.

Contempt for advertisers presaged sharp decline in ad revenue

Musk has made his contempt for advertiser pressure clear in public, too. In a November 2023 interview at the DealBook Summit, when asked about brands leaving the platform, he said, “If somebody’s going to try to blackmail me with advertising, blackmail me with money… go f—k yourself.”

Addressing Disney CEO Bob Iger directly, who was reportedly in the audience, Musk added: “Hey, Bob, go f—k yourself.”

X’s ad sales fell from $4.6 billion in 2022 to $2.6 billion last year, a 44% decrease, even as the larger ad industry grew by double digits over the same period. For their part, Meta, Google, YouTube, and Amazon all saw vast gains in ad spend over that period. Pinterest and TikTok also saw ad spending grow significantly.

Even Snap, with its choppy track record, saw ad revenue climb between 2022 and 2025.

Though it’s recently ticked up, X’s ad revenue remains well below pre-Musk levels, per the Journal. Emarketer projects 2025 will bring the first annual ad growth since the takeover, though it’s also expected to remain below pre-Musk-takeover levels.

Meanwhile the backlash may just be getting started. Some ad agencies are now demanding legal immunity from future lawsuits before agreeing to spend on X.

X has refused.