X, the Elon Musk-owned platform formerly known as Twitter, has begun serving its users with a weird new ad format and it’s one of the company’s least transparent products yet, Mashable reported. The rollout of these ads also provides the public with a hint regarding just how much the company is struggling to attract advertisers.

Multiple X users have reached out to Mashable over the past few days to report seeing a new type of ad in their For You feed that they had not previously come across on the platform. These new X ads don’t allow users to like or retweet the ad posts. In fact, the new ad format also doesn’t disclose who is behind the ad or that it is even an advertisement at all.

Mashable has confirmed this ad format with numerous users from across X and have seen a variety of different ads running this bizarre new format that just consists of written copy text, a photo, and a fake avatar that’s sole purpose is to make the ad look like an organically posted tweet.

According to Mashable, the type of content being promoted in the ads that Mashable has viewed appear to be consistent with ads found in spammy, low quality, “chumbox” advertising – typically defined as those clickbait ads found at the bottom of posts on content farm sites – made popular by native ad networks like Taboola.

Daring Fireball (by John Gruber) reported that Linda Yaccarino keeps claiming that X is on the upswing, but looking at the actual content – especially the ads – says otherwise. These new “chumbox” ads are bottom-of-the-barrel stuff, the sort of ads I’d expect to see on a third-rate Twitter knock off site like Truth Social. X itself now feels like a third-rate Twitter knock off.

Media Matters For America posted a research/study titled “Linda Yaccarino again claims advertisers are returning to X. Here are the facts.” From Media Matters:

CEO Linda Yaccarino and others at X (formerly Twitter) have repeatedly tried to boast that advertisers are returning to the platform, but Media Matters analysis tells a different story: Since Elon Musk took over the company, it has earned 42% less ad revenue and had 28% fewer individual monthly advertisers than before his leadership began. Additionally, in the 12 weeks of Yaccarino’s tenure as CEO, the majority of the company’s top 100 advertisers pre-Musk spent a fraction of what they did in the 12 weeks prior to Musk’s acquisition.

For example, Visa – which Yaccarino cited as an example of a “returning” advertiser – has spent just $10 in the past 12 weeks, compared to roughly $77,500 in the 12 weeks before Musk bought Twitter.

Media Matters has been tracking advertising data on X from Sensor Tower since Musk acquired what was then called Twitter on October 27, 2022. Less than a month later, Media Matters found that 50 of the top 100 advertisers from prior to Musk’s takeover had either announced they would stop, or seemingly stopped, advertising on the platform.

In our latest analysis, Media Matters found that the company’s ad revenue is still decimated. The company has earned an average monthly ad revenue of $69.5 million from roughly 1,900 average monthly advertisers in the last 11 months – 42% less revenue and 28% fewer advertisers than in the 11 months before Musk acquired the company.

It seems to me that the lack of advertisers on X could be part of the reason why Elon Musk is trying to emphasize new premium subscription tiers. To my knowledge, the price of those premium subscriptions plans hasn’t been officially announced yet. In the meantime, the bizarre ads that are appearing on X might be what influences people to leave the platform.