US: 3 things to know about consumer perceptions of advertising on X/Twitter

When it comes to executing a marketing strategy, understanding why your competitors’ customers are choosing them over you can be just as valuable as knowing your own brand’s strengths.

Competitive analysis can help marketers understand exactly how satisfied customers of a rival brand are, as well as what they perceive as its shortcomings, allowing you to position your brand or product in the right place to take advantage.

Using its ‘Customers of’ targeting capabilities, YouGov Self-serve - our fully self-serviced research platform - allows marketers to quickly, easily and cheaply survey their competitors’ customers – and ask them (within reason) whatever they want.

In just a few clicks, you can target an audience of your choice, selecting from customers of one (or more) of 1,500 brands in Great Britain or 2,200 brands in US, and then create your custom poll using our easy survey builder. Within 24 hours, you could have the answers that make the difference between failure and success for your upcoming product launch, brand campaign or crisis management strategy.

In this piece we used our survey tools to understand user sentiments regarding advertising on X/Twitter. Here are three insights into American X users’ experience with ads on the social platform.

1. How easily can users recognize ads on X/Twitter?

With the rise of ad-driven content, we asked X users how easy or difficult it is for them to distinguish between advertisements and regular content on the platform.

Most seem confident that they recognize when something is an ad, with three-quarters (72%) of X/Twitter users saying it is very easy or fairly easy to do so.

15% of users say it is challenging to identify what’s an ad and what’s not.

2. What do they think about the quantity and quality of advertising?

When asked to compare the number of ads that they see on X versus other platforms, 38% of X users say they see too many ads.

But a near equal share of X/Twitter users believe that the ad volume is about right (41%).

Regarding the quality of X/Twitter ads, a plurality (41%) of users believes that the ads they see are about the same quality compared to that of other platforms. But perhaps in a blow to efforts to attract lost advertisers like Disney, whom owner Elon Musk famously called out this month, a big share - 32% -  think the ads are of lower quality than those found on other apps.


3. How trustworthy are X/Twitter ads?

X/Twitter users appear to be conflicted on whether ads on X/Twitter as trustworthy as social media ads are found on other platforms. That’s not to say that many find them more trustworthy, as only 15% believe that to be the case.

Instead, they tend to be torn between whether X/Twitter ads are just as trustworthy (39%) or less trustworthy (34%) as other social media ads. Again, this perception among a third of users that the ads they see aren’t credible isn’t likely to be helpful to the pitch of new CEO Linda Yaccarino.

Methodology

YouGov polled 450 US adults who are members of X/Twitter on December 8, 2023. The survey was carried out through YouGov Surveys: Self-serve. Data is weighted by age, gender, race, political affiliation, education level and region. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Self-serve.