Why advertisers have to stick with Qatar – but not with Twitter

Two of the biggest stories of the moment give a stark illustration of the power, and lack of it, in the media space, writes Hamish McRae

Since Elon Musk took over, a string of companies have cancelled or suspended their advertising on Twitter (NTB/AFP via Getty)

The World Cup needs advertisers, but the advertisers need the World Cup more. Twitter needs advertisers, but advertisers can get along without Twitter.

Two of the biggest stories of the moment give a stark illustration of the power, and lack of it, in the media space. The World Cup is huge. An estimated 5 billion people will watch it, out of the 8 billion of us on the planet. That’s way ahead of the Tour de France (3.6 billion), the Olympics (3.6 billion in Rio de Janeiro in 2016), and 2.6 billion for the cricket World Cup in 2019.

For any advertiser with global ambitions, access to nearly two-thirds of the world’s population is one of the things you cannot ignore, even if within some of your markets there is political pushback against the regime of the host country. You may make a strategic decision that your marketing budget is better spent elsewhere, but if you take the plunge, you stick with it.