Walmart joins the X / Twitter ad boycott — this one will sting

Just ahead of the festive shopping season, Walmart has decided to cease its advertising on Elon Musk’s X. This move aligns with a wave of major companies that have also distanced themselves from the platform in recent weeks.

Explaining the decision, a Walmart spokesperson informed Reuters that the company chose to redirect its ad spending to platforms that better connect with its customer base.

Musk’s Controversial Remarks and the Fallout

Walmart’s withdrawal from advertising on X follows Musk, the platform’s owner, lashing out with profane language at boycotting advertisers during an interview at The New York Times’ DealBook Summit.

Earlier in mid-November, X encountered advertiser trouble after Musk endorsed an antisemitic conspiracy theory shared by a user on the platform.

Musk’s support for the Great Replacement Theory, a conspiracy claiming that Jewish organizations are striving to replace white individuals in the U.S. and Europe with minority groups, triggered a series of issues. Musk went on to criticize groups such as the ADL for failing to “criticize the minority groups who are their primary threat.”

Subsequent to Musk’s comments and a report from Media Matters, advertisers began to pull out from the platform.

Walmart Joins a Lengthy List of Departing Advertisers

IBM led the withdrawal, followed by companies such as Apple, Disney, Sony, Warner Bros., Comcast, NBCUniversal, and Paramount.

Following the advertiser boycott, Musk and his team sued Media Matters over its report, squarely attributing its loss in ad revenue to the organization’s findings.

During the recent DealBook Summit, Musk tried to mitigate the impact of his remarks by suggesting he was referring to Jewish groups funding minority groups that do not support Israel. However, he did not specify which groups he meant, nor did he address his initial support for the Great Replacement Theory post.

Bob Iger, Disney CEO, also addressed the DealBook Summit, and explained that Disney distanced itself due to Musk’s public stance.

“By him taking the position that he took in quite a public manner, we just felt that the association with that position and Elon Musk and X was not necessarily a positive one for us,” Iger stated. “And we decided we would pull our advertising.”

Walmart’s move seems to reflect a similar evaluation made by several other companies on the platform.