Twitter's U.S. advertising revenue was down 59% to $88 million for the five weeks starting April 1 from the same period a year earlier, according to an internal presentation obtained by The New York Times, the newspaper reported on Monday.
This continues a trend in which the company has regularly fallen short of its U.S. weekly sales projections, according to the document, despite recent comments from Twitter CEO Elon Musk that advertising business was on the rise and that the social media company could soon become profitable.
But the Times reported that, according to the documents and seven current and former Twitter employees, the performance is unlikely to improve anytime soon, with concerns that in June, U.S. ad revenue will be down at least 56% each week compared with a year ago.
The state of Twitter's advertising is of the utmost importance, because ads have long constituted 90% of the company's revenue.
Twitter's ad sales staff is concerned that advertisers may be put off by an increase in hate speech and pornography on the social network, as well as more ads featuring online gambling and marijuana products, the sources said.
Twitter feels increasingly "unpredictable and chaotic," Jason Kint, chief executive of Digital Content Next, an association for premium publishers, told the Times. He added that "advertisers want to run in an environment where they are comfortable and can send a signal about their brand."
Six ad agency executives who have worked with Twitter said their clients continued to limit spending on the platform. They cited confusion over Musk's changes to the service, inconsistent backing from Twitter and concerns about the constant presence of misleading and toxic content on the platform.
Twitter is also looking into ways to make it easier for advertisers to purchase space on the platform, testing an automated system outside the United States to make deals, two people familiar with the arrangement said, according to Business Insider.
Some advertisers hope Twitter's new chief executive, Linda Yaccarino, will help resolve many of the difficulties.
Dave Campanelli, the chief investment officer of Horizon Media, said he was hoping for change after Yaccarino started, because media agencies like his struggled to maintain contact with Twitter last fall after Musk arrived, the Times reported.