X Dangles $200K for Advertisers to Return to the Platform, Leaked Deck Shows

Ad performance—and ad-linked sales in particular—has been a fixation of Musk’s as the company looks to recover ad revenues. In February of 2023, Musk wrote in a post: “Almost nobody buys anything on Twitter, but almost everyone on Instagram does.”

As recently as this month, Musk posted an interactive survey on X asking users if they’d ever made a purchase based on an ad they’d seen on the platform. Of some 1.6 million responses, 88% they had not.

Have you ever bought anything based on an ad on this platform?

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 9, 2026

X did not provide an on-the-record comment by press time.