SpaceX just bought a big ad campaign on Twitter for Starlink
SpaceX founder Elon Musk during a T-Mobile and SpaceX joint event on August 25, 2022 in Boca Chica Beach, Texas.
Michael Gonzalez | Getty Images
Elon Musk’s aerospace business SpaceX has ordered one of the larger advertising packages available from Twitter, the social media business he just acquired in a $44 billion deal and where he is now serving as CEO.
The campaign will promote the SpaceX-owned and -operated satellite internet service called Starlink on Twitter in Spain and Australia, according to internal records from the social media business viewed by CNBC.
The ad campaign SpaceX is buying to promote Starlink is called a Twitter “takeover.” When a company buys one of these packages, they typically spend upwards of $250,000 to put their brand on top of the main Twitter timeline for a full day, according to one current and one former Twitter employee who asked to remain unnamed because they were not authorized to speak on behalf of the company.
Users should see Starlink brand messaging for the first three times that they open the Twitter app on the day or days of the planned takeover campaign in Australia and in Spain. The campaign, which was purchased in the last week, was slated to run in coming days first in Australia then in Spain.
SpaceX has not typically purchased large advertising packages from Twitter, the current and former employees said.
Starlink employs a constellation of satellites that beam internet down to paying subscribers who also need to obtain terminals from SpaceX to access it. SpaceX developed Starlink with the goal of providing high-speed internet connectivity to people in locations poorly served, or not served at all, by cable or fiber-optic infrastructure.
Pressure on Twitter ad sales
Musk is also the CEO of electric vehicle maker Tesla, in addition to his responsibilities at SpaceX and Twitter. He has famously boasted that his car company spends no money on traditional advertising like print, radio, television and display ads online. Instead, Tesla garners headlines from fan blogs, news sites, and creates buzz through motor clubs, fan or shareholder events and social media engagement.
Musk now finds himself in the position of needing to sell online advertising as the “Chief Twit,” or more formally CEO, of Twitter which remains a major, international social media platform. Twitter boasted around 237.8 million monetizable daily active users before Musk’s contentious take-private deal. Musk is on a mission to generate at least half of Twitter’s revenue from subscribers, not just advertising.
One campaign, even a big one like a “takeover,” is not enough to make up for multiple advertisers who have paused spending on Twitter recently, or fled the platform during Musk’s rocky takeover.
Companies including General Motors, Audi, Volkswagen, General Mills, Pfizer, United Airlines and others have paused their ad spending on Twitter for the time being, responding in part to an onslaught of hate speech and misinformation on the platform. Advertising giant Interpublic Group recommended that clients of its agencies do the same. Twitter previously derived around 90% of its revenue from advertising.
When Musk launched and then quickly suspended a paid subscriber badge on Twitter last week, this further shook advertisers’ faith in the platform. The badge looked like an earlier verification blue check mark but only cost users $7.99 per month. Cheaply acquired blue check marks were used by pranksters and imposters to pose as brands, politicians and celebrities and to post unflattering and inaccurate messages.
One account created in the likeness of the drug company Eli Lilly caused a serious problem on Thursday when it posted a message that, “we are excited to announce insulin is free now.” The tweet went viral and remained on Twitter for at least two hours before it was taken down. The real Eli Lilly account later tweeted: “We apologize to those who have been served a misleading message from a fake Lilly account.”
Eli Lilly’s stock price dropped sharply after the fake tweet was posted, though major stock indices were positive at that time, with the S&P 500 experiencing its biggest rally in two years. Musk-led automaker Tesla, SpaceX competitor Lockheed Martin, Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and many others were also impersonated and pilloried on the platform.
This weekend, Musk wrote in a tweet, “Twitter drives a massive number of clicks to other websites/apps. Biggest click driver on the Internet by far.” The new Twitter CEO was promptly corrected by marketing experts and former Twitter employees, and a correction note was added to his tweet. He later deleted the tweet.
One former Twitter employee, Claire Díaz-Ortiz called him out, writing: “Lies. I worked @twitter 5 yrs + wrote 2 books on social media marketing. This is false and @twitter knows it. We never sold it on clicks, because it is much lower on traffic than Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. Twitter has other key strengths. (And marketing is way more than clicks.”
In a companywide meeting last week, Musk told current Twitter employees that bankruptcy isn’t out of the question, as the business faces an exodus of advertisers and a broader economic downturn.
Dado Ruvic | Reuters
Dina Powell McCormick, who was a member of President Donald Trump’s first administration, has resigned from Meta’s board of directors.
Powell McCormick, who previously spent 16 years working at Goldman Sachs, notified Meta of her resignation on Friday, according to a filing with the SEC. The filing did not disclose why McCormick was stepping down from Meta’s board, but said her resignation was effective immediately.
Meta does not plan on replacing her board role, according to a person familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to confidentiality. Powell McCormick is considering a potential strategic advisory role with Meta, but nothing has been decided, the person said.
Powell McCormick joined Meta’s board in April along with Stripe co-founder and CEO Patrick Collison. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said in a statement at the time that the two executives “bring a lot of experience supporting businesses and entrepreneurs to our board.”
Powell McCormick served as a deputy national security advisor to President Trump during his first stint in office and was also an assistant secretary of state during President George W. Bush’s administration.
She is married to Sen. Dave McCormick, R-Pa, who took office in January.
Powell McCormick is the vice chair, president and head of global client services at BDT & MSD Partners, which formed in 2023 after the merchant bank BDT combined with Michael Dell’s investment firm MSD.
With her departure, Meta now has 14 board members, including UFC CEO Dana White, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan and former Enron executive John Arnold.
WATCH: TikTok signs joint venture to create TikTok USDS Joint Venture.
Technology
Musk’s $56 billion Tesla pay package must be restored as court rules cancellation was too extreme
Elon Musk‘s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, worth some $56 billion when it vested, must be restored, the Delaware Supreme Court ruled Friday.
“We reverse the Court of Chancery’s rescission remedy and award $1 in nominal damages,” the judges wrote in their opinion.
In the decision, the Delaware Supreme Court judges said a lower court’s decision to cancel Musk’s 2018 pay plan was too extreme a remedy and that the lower court did not give Tesla a chance to say what a fair compensation ought to be.
The decision on the appeal in this case, known as Tornetta v. Musk, likely ends the yearslong fight over Musk’s record-setting compensation.
Musk’s net worth is currently estimated at around $679.4 billion, according to the Forbes Real Time Billionaires List.
Dorothy Lund, a professor at Columbia Law School, told CNBC that while the Friday opinion may restore the 2018 pay plan for Musk, it leaves the rest of the lower court’s decision unaddressed and intact.
“The court had previously decided that Musk was a controlling shareholder of Tesla and that the Tesla board and he arranged an unfair pay plan for him,” she said. “None of that was reversed in this decision.”
“We are proud to have participated in the historic verdict below, calling to account the Tesla board and its largest stockholder for their breaches of fiduciary duty,” lawyers representing plaintiff Richard J. Tornetta said in an e-mailed statement.
Tesla did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
The Delaware Supreme Court issued the order per curiam with no single judge taking credit for writing the opinion and no dissent noted.
Musk’s 2018 CEO pay package from Tesla, comprised of 12 milestone-based tranches of stock, was unprecedented at the time it was proposed. After it was granted, the pay plan made Musk the wealthiest individual in the world.
Tesla shareholder Tornetta sued Tesla, filing a derivative action in 2018, accusing Musk and the company’s board of a breach of their fiduciary duties.
Delaware’s business-specialized Court of Chancery decided in January 2024 that the pay plan was improperly granted and ordered it to be rescinded.
In her decision, Chancellor Kathaleen McCormick also found that Musk “controlled Tesla,” and that the process leading to the board’s approval of his 2018 pay plan was “deeply flawed.”
Among other things, she found the Tesla board did not disclose all the material information they should have to investors before asking them to vote on and approve the plan.
After the earlier Tornetta ruling, Musk moved Tesla’s site of incorporation out of Delaware, bashed McCormick by name in posts on his social network X, formerly Twitter, where he has tens of millions of followers, and called for other entrepreneurs to reincorporate outside of the state.
Tesla also attempted to “ratify” the 2018 CEO pay plan by holding a second vote with shareholders in 2024.
In November, Tesla shareholders voted to approve an even larger CEO compensation plan for Musk.
The 2025 pay plan consists of 12 tranches of shares to be granted to the CEO if Tesla hits certain milestones over the next decade and is worth about $1 trillion in total. The new plan could also increase Musk’s voting power over the company from around 13% today to around 25%.
Shareholders had also approved a plan to replace Musk’s 2018 CEO pay if the Tornetta decision was upheld on appeal. That plan is now nullified.
As CNBC previously reported, a law firm that currently represents Tesla in this appeal penned a bill to overhaul corporate law in Delaware earlier this year. The bill was passed by the Delaware legislature in March, and if it had applied retroactively, it could have affected the outcome of this case.
Read the Delaware Supreme Court’s ruling here.
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