In April, billionaire Twitter owner Elon Musk said the company’s finances were looking up as almost all advertisers had returned to the platform, the BBC reported.
But Twitter‘s U.S. ad revenue is telling a different story, according to The New York Times. The outlet obtained an internal company presentation, which revealed that its U.S. ad revenue was $88 million from April 1 to the first week of May — down 59% from a year earlier.
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The report said Twitter has consistently failed to reach its weekly sales projections, sometimes by as much as 30%, and that trajectory’s unlikely to improve, per the documents and seven current and former Twitter employees. The company has predicted that U.S. ad revenue this month will drop at least 56% each week year over year.
Former NBCUniversal executive Linda Yaccarino reportedly assumed the role of Twitter chief executive on Monday (earlier than expected, per The Information) and inherited the company’s many significant problems, which include increasing hate speech and ads for online gambling and marijuana products, sources told the NYT.
That’s a dealbreaker for many major advertisers: As of February, more than half of Twitter’s top 1,000 advertisers before the acquisition had pulled their ads from the platform, per data from digital marketing analysis firm Pathmatics reported by Vox.
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Twitter’s valuation has plunged since Musk bought the company for $44 billion in October, with ads making up 90% of its revenue. Last week, Fidelity, which owns Twitter shares, valued the company at just $15 billion, per the NYT.