Musk 1 Advertisers 0 – WFA winds up GARM in face of X court action
That didn’t take long did it? The World Federation of Advertisers is winding up its Global Alliance for Responsible Media (GARM) just a couple of days after X owner Elon Musk (below) filed an antitrust lawsuit against it in an obscure Texas court.
GARM is a cross-industry initiative supported by the WFA, a trade body containing the world’s biggest advertisers, aimed at avoiding misinformation and harmful content online. Musk says its “ban,” if that’s what it is, has cost X billions in lost ad revenue. X’s ad revenue this year looks likely to be a fraction of 2023’s $5bn.
The WFA told its members on Thursday that it was “discontinuing” GARM activities. CEO Stephan Loerke wrote in an email that the decision was “not made lightly” but that GARM was a “not-for-profit organization with limited resources.”
X owner Elon Musk, of course, reportedly the world’s richest man thanks to his stake in Tesla, has almost unlimited resources even though he’s taking enormous losses at X which he bought for a dizzying $40bn.
X CEO Linda Yaccarino posted: “No small group should be able to monopolize what gets monetized. This is an important acknowledgement and a necessary step in the right direction. I am hopeful that it means ecosystem-wide reform is coming.”
As for the WFA, whose members include CVS Health, Mars, Orsted and Unilever, all named in X’s action, it looks feeble and divided. All the many pundits and supposed expert consultants who said Musk was whistling in the dark now look silly.
Such widespread assumptions only work when everyone plays by the existing rules. Musk doesn’t.
