(Bloomberg) — The chief executive officer of the world’s largest advertising agency said Elon Musk’s plans for Twitter Inc. could improve the service and be welcomed by the London-based company’s clients.
“There’s no doubt that Twitter can be a stronger product,” WPP Plc CEO Mark Read said on Bloomberg Television in an interview with Francine Lacqua and Tom Mackenzie on Wednesday.
“Many of his ideas around fake bots, and improving the algorithms and improving the customer experience would be great for the platform, great for users and great for our clients,” he said.
Read also said that any potential crackdown on advertising would hurt Twitter more than WPP, although he said he didn’t expect a cut-off. “I don’t think he’s going to pay $44 billion for a company and then effectively eliminate its revenue line,” Read said.
The CEO’s comments follow Musk’s assertion that he has no expectation of making a profit owning Twitter, before agreeing on Monday to buy the social media platform.
“This is not a way to sort of make money,” Musk said on April 14 at the TED conference, insisting that his interest in Twitter was purely benevolent. “I don’t care about the economics at all.”
Read more: Elon Musk’s $44 Billion Claim on the Future of Free Speech
The billionaire entrepreneur has talked about limiting advertising on Twitter, opening up the site’s content algorithms for public scrutiny and trying to “authenticate all real humans” as a means of differentiating between bots and legitimate accounts.
Musk has also said he’d like to make the platform a bastion of free speech, taking the guardrails off of content moderation.
Twitter, Musk and Why Online Speech Gets Moderated: QuickTake
Some advertisers have cautioned that could turn off brands who’d be concerned about their ads appearing near controversial posts. Financial analysts have also said that reduced moderation could put ad dollars at risk.
“No doubt some people are concerned about the content on the platform,” Read said. “That type of approach may work, it may not, we’ll have to see.”
More stories like this are available on bloomberg.com
©2022 Bloomberg L.P.
