Elon Musk says Twitter can make more money with relevant ads

Twitter Chief Executive Elon Musk on Tuesday said that the messaging service makes about 5 or 6 cents per hour of attention from users and could raise that to 15 cents or more with advertisements that are more relevant and timely.

Musk, who was speaking at an investor conference that was webcast, said it was “startling” how poorly Twitter managed to make money off the service.

Twitter has been marked by chaos and uncertainty since Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in October. On Monday, Twitter suffered a bug that prevented thousands of users from accessing links, its sixth major outage since the beginning of the year, according to internet watchdog group NetBlocks.

Some advertisers have fled Twitter due to the uncertainty over how Musk, who has called himself a “free speech absolutist,” would approach content moderation.

Ad spending by Twitter’s top 30 advertisers fell 42% in November and December combined, according to estimates from Pathmatics by Sensor Tower.