Over a year ago, Apple retracted its advertisements from the platform X, following a series of offensive, antisemitic posts made by far-right users, which were endorsed by Elon Musk. Coincidentally, during the same period, a report surfaced revealing that ads from renowned companies like Apple were being displayed on content that supported Nazi ideologies on X.
However, the landscape has significantly changed since November 2023 when Apple ceased its advertising campaign on Musk’s X, previously known as Twitter. A major development being the re-election of Donald Trump as the president, with Musk playing a crucial role as his right-hand man.
Fast forward to 15 months later, and Apple has resumed advertising on the platform X.
According to MacRumors, Apple is presently operating at least two separate ad campaigns on X. One of these campaigns, run from the verified @Apple X account, is designed to promote their Safari web browser. The other campaign is spearheaded by Apple’s @AppleTV account, promoting the Apple TV series ‘Severance’.
Interestingly, these ads are not visible on either of the profile pages of the accounts on X. But this isn’t out of the ordinary for Apple. X permits advertisers to boost regular posts as ads, appearing on their profile page, or to run a post specifically as an ad, which doesn’t appear on the advertiser’s profile page. Apple has consistently preferred the latter approach when running ads on X. However, for a user to see these posts, X must serve the ads to them.
As highlighted by MacRumors, despite Apple hitting the pause button on its ad campaigns, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives continued to have an active presence on Musk’s platform.
While Apple has recommenced its ads on X, the extent of their current ad campaigns remains uncertain. The Safari ad, for instance, garnered just over 600,000 impressions as of Feb. 13, three days after it was initially posted on Feb. 10. Other advertisers who had previously withdrawn have made a comeback at different stages, albeit with a significantly scaled-back marketing budget for ad spend on X.
