China is one of the largest revenue sources for Twitter outside the United States, though the micro blogging platform has been blocked in the country. A recent review conducted by Reuters on government tenders, budget documents and promoted tweets from 2020 to 2022 revealed that China has emerged as the fastest growing overseas ad market for Twitter.
Local authorities and Communist Party officials have heavily invested in promotions on tourism or local economies or cultural milestones, the Reuters investigation revealed.
In 2019, Twitter had banned advertising from political and state-media. However, the same year it announced that ads "from (state-media) accounts solely dedicated to entertainment, sports and travel content" would be permitted. In March 2022, that exemption was revoked.
The review reflects on how Twitter has shifted focus on overseas markets after coming under pressure from investors to meet growth targets at a time when its US business has stalled.
As part of its global strategy, Twitter’s China sales team actively courted local authorities to compete for ad business with tech rivals such as Alphabet’s Google and Meta’s Facebook, Reuters report added quoting sources.
Key Twitter customers in China include gaming, e-commerce, and tech firms. Sales of overseas advertisements to Chinese clients from Twitter are estimated to be in the “hundreds of millions of dollars a year”, according to the report.
According to Reuters, Twitter declined to comment on its sales performance in China. However, a spokesperson said that Twitter did not hide the fact that it did business with Chinese commercial entities.
Twitter’s business in China is expected to be highlighted, on September 13, at the US Senate Judiciary committee hearing of a complaint filed by Twitter’s former security chief Peiter Zatko.
Zatko had claimed that Twitter executives were aware that accepting Chinese money could endanger users in China and that he was told that “Twitter was too dependent upon the revenue stream at this point to do anything other than attempt to increase it.”
Twitter denied the allegations.
In the past three years, Chinese police have arrested citizens and courts have sentenced many who have found ways to use the banned platform to criticise authorities, reports on Chinese court cases have revealed.
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