The social media platform reported a large drop in UK revenues in 2024, blaming reduced advertising spend from major brands amid ongoing concerns around brand safety.
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X’s UK revenues fell by almost 60% in 2024 as advertisers continued to reduce spending on the channel amid ongoing concerns around brand safety, reputation and content moderation.
The social media platform reported a 58.3% drop in UK revenues, from £69.1m in 2023 to £28.9m in 2024, according to accounts filed at Companies House for the year ending 31 December 2024.
Pre-tax profits also declined, falling from £2.2m to £767,000 year on year. A sharp fall when compared with £8.5m in pre-tax profits recorded in 2022, the year Elon Musk acquired the platform, then known as Twitter.X revenue fell two-thirds in UK following Elon Musk takeover
In its filing, the company attributed the downturn primarily to reduced advertising spend from large brands.
“The significant decrease in the performance of the company is a result of the decline of advertising revenue primarily driven by a reduction in spend from large brand advertisers due to concerns about brand safety, reputation and/or content moderation,” X said.
X added that it is “taking proactive measures” to address advertiser concerns, including building brand safety tools, investing in platform safety and content moderation and educating advertisers about those initiatives.
The company also cited wider macroeconomic pressures, including inflation, tariffs and reduced consumer confidence, which it said had made advertisers more cautious about spending and led to budget cuts on the platform.
Headcount in the UK continued to fall during the year. The number of employees in sales and marketing dropped from 59 in 2023 to 37 in 2024, while total UK staff numbers declined from 114 to 76. By comparison, X employed 152 people in sales and marketing and 399 staff overall in the UK in 2022.The Week in Tech: Lego’s bold tech play and X hits a new low
The results come amid scrutiny of the platform’s approach to content moderation – particularly the protection of women and children.
Earlier this week, X restricted the image generation feature of its AI tool, Grok, to paying subscribers following widespread criticism over its use to create sexually explicit and violent imagery of women and girls.
Downing Street condemned the move today (9 January), with a spokesperson describing the decision as “unacceptable” and “insulting”.
“The move simply turns an AI feature that allows the creation of unlawful images into a premium service,” they said.
“If another media company had billboards in town centres showing unlawful images, it would act immediately to take them down or face public backlash.”
Previously, Ofcom made “urgent contact” with X about the trend, which is illegal under the Online Safety Act regarding “deepfake” images.