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Short answer: Elon Musk’s campaign has produced better safety controls and some advertiser activity, but it has not restored X’s reputation with marketers. Independent surveys still show weak trust and planned budget cuts, while platform claims and third-party spending estimates point to a selective, event-driven recovery rather than a return to normal.
What the evidence actually shows
“Ruined reputation” is a useful description of the problem advertisers say they face, not an established measurement. The indicators below answer different questions and should not be treated as interchangeable.
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| Indicator | Finding | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Kantar, 2025 | 29% net of marketers planned to reduce spending on X in 2026; nearly one in eight planned to withdraw entirely. X ranked last among global brands for marketer trust for the third consecutive year. | Marketer sentiment and stated spending intentions. |
| Kantar, 2024 | 26% net planned to reduce X spending in 2025. Trust in X ads fell from 22% in 2022 to 12% in 2024, and only 4% thought X ads provided brand safety. | Perceived trust and safety among marketers. |
| X Business, 2025 | X reported a 99.99% average brand-safety score and a 97% average brand-suitability score across its third-party measurement partners. | Measured adjacency for campaigns using X’s systems, not overall marketer confidence. |
| X, October 2023 | The company said safety exceeded 99% and suitability exceeded 97% when controls were applied. It also claimed 1,700 advertisers had returned in the preceding quarter, including 90 of the 100 largest spenders from a year earlier. | Company-reported safety results and advertiser-account activity. |
| X advertising head, reported by Digiday in 2026 | X said 97 of its top 100 advertisers had returned. It did not disclose spending, a baseline period or how “returned” was defined. | Advertiser presence, according to X. |
| Sensor Tower estimates reported by Digiday, 2026 | Sixty-four advertisers from the 2022 top 100 spent on X in 2025, with aggregate spending estimated at about 50% below 2022. | Estimated dollars spent by a defined group. |
| Filing figure reported by Digiday, 2026 | Advertising revenue declined by $595 million in 2024 because of lost advertising partners. | One year’s reported revenue change, not proof of 2025 or 2026 recovery. |
| Pew Research Center, U.S. X users, 2024 | 87% said people generally feel free to express political views. Seventy-three percent said harassment was a problem, including 32% calling it a major problem. On democracy, 38% said X was mostly good, 27% mostly bad and 34% said it had no impact. | User perceptions in the United States, not a global advertiser survey. |
Musk’s public pitch to advertisers
Musk made the recovery effort unusually personal. At Cannes Lions in June 2024, he recast his earlier profanity-laced confrontation with advertisers as an objection to demands he viewed as censorship. His central argument was that advertisers should be able to decide what content is compatible with their brands while X protects broad expression.
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He also argued that X reaches influential people and senior decision-makers. That is a pitch for the platform’s audience and influence, not evidence that marketers have accepted its governance or content environment.
What X changed on the product side
X’s operational case rests on giving buyers more control over where ads appear. Its safety documentation describes advertiser placement and sensitivity settings, keyword targeting, adjacency controls and transparency tools. X says content is assessed with machine learning and human review, and names Integral Ad Science and DoubleVerify as third-party measurement partners.
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Those tools can make an individual campaign’s placements more predictable. They do not, by themselves, answer broader questions about moderation decisions, policy changes, leadership conduct or whether a brand wants to be associated with the platform. A strong suitability score is therefore evidence about measured ad adjacency, not a verdict on X’s overall reputation.
Why marketer trust has not followed the safety claims
Kantar’s surveys measure how senior marketers view the platform and what they say they plan to do with their budgets. X’s published safety figures measure campaign-level outcomes through measurement partners. An advertiser can accept the controls for a limited campaign while still deciding that X is too unpredictable for a large, continuous commitment.
“Marketers are brand custodians and need to trust the platforms they use. X has changed so much in recent years and can be unpredictable from one day to the next – it’s difficult to feel confident about your brand safety in that environment.”
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— Gonca Bubani, Kantar Global Thought Leadership Director – Media, on the 2024 findings
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This explains why the two evidence sets can appear to conflict. Technical controls may improve measured placements without repairing confidence in the company operating the platform.
Are advertisers really coming back?
There is evidence of renewed activity, but “returned” is not the same as “restored its former budget.” X’s 2023 and 2026 announcements count advertiser accounts or clients and do not establish how much those companies spent, how long they stayed, or whether they ran broad campaigns.
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The Sensor Tower estimates reported by Digiday provide the missing spending perspective: some of the companies that advertise on X again were spending substantially less than before Musk’s acquisition. Digiday also described brands using X for specific live events, conferences and other high-attention moments. That pattern fits eMarketer principal analyst Max Willens’s assessment:
“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,”
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The reported 2024 advertising-revenue decline reinforces why advertiser counts alone are insufficient. It records a damaging year, but it is not a complete measure of what happened afterward.
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What users think is a separate reputation test
Pew’s 2024 survey shows why public opinion cannot be reduced to a single “good” or “bad” label. Most surveyed U.S. users said people can express political views on X, yet harassment was also widely recognized as a problem. Views about whether X helps democracy divided sharply along partisan lines.
These findings describe U.S. users, not global consumers or advertising decision-makers. They help explain the platform’s appeal to people seeking political reach while also highlighting the environment that can make brand associations uncomfortable.
How to judge whether the reputation campaign worked
- Check dollars, not just logos: advertiser presence can rise while average budgets remain far below earlier levels.
- Separate independent trust surveys from platform metrics: Kantar’s responses measure confidence; X’s safety scores measure campaign adjacency.
- Ask what “safe” means: suitability controls address placement near particular content, while governance and wider content concerns are broader.
- Look for always-on commitments: event-specific or performance campaigns indicate selective use, not necessarily a full return.
- Keep geography and audience straight: Pew’s user results are U.S.-specific, whereas Kantar’s marketer study is global.
On those tests, Musk has improved X’s sales pitch and tooling but has not demonstrated a complete reputation reset. The strongest evidence points to cautious, conditional advertising rather than the unquestioned trust brands typically give an essential platform.
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