Elon Musk has turned his personal X account into a billboard for Donald Trump’s election campaign, but the billionaire’s political action committee has made the company a much smaller part of its marketing strategy, funneling just 3.6% of its total social media ad spend to his own network.
Through Monday, Musk’s America PAC spent about $201,000 on political ads on X, according to updated disclosures from the company, formerly known as Twitter. All of the PAC’s advertising this month has targeted users in Pennsylvania, a key battleground state where Musk has spent considerable time campaigning on behalf of the former president.
Since America PAC took over the @america X account on Oct. 7, it has spent $34,366 on ads promoting a daily million-dollar giveaway and Musk’s own townhall-style speeches in the state. The political action committee earlier spent more than $166,000 on X ads under its previous account.
America PAC declined to comment, while a spokesperson for X didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The PAC’s advertising spend with X is dwarfed by what it has allocated to other social media networks. Through Oct. 19, America PAC spent more than $3.8 million on ads at Meta Platforms Inc., which owns Facebook and Instagram, according to Meta’s ad library. The PAC is using those social networks to advertise Musk’s appearances in Pennsylvania, but also to promote Republican candidates in down-ballot races.
America PAC has also spent more than $1.5 million with Alphabet Inc., according to the Google Ads Transparency Center, including for spots on YouTube and to boost Google search results. The ads tout voter registration website VoteSafe and encourage young male voters to get off the couch and vote.
America PAC’s relatively small spend on X may be due to Musk’s personal use of the platform to promote Trump for free to his more than 200 million followers. Musk frequently retweets America PAC’s posts and has been live-streaming his townhall appearances in Pennsylvania. His bio on X now directs people to “Read @America to understand why I’m supporting Trump for President,” and he links to the PAC’s website in his profile.
Musk, 53, the world’s richest person, hasn’t purchased any paid political advertisements directly, according to the disclosures. Along with owning X, he’s the co-founder of Tesla Inc. and rocket company SpaceX and has a net worth of $240.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index.
Musk started an incentive program offering cash to people who refer swing-state voters to sign a petition backing the Constitution and recently upped the payouts to $100 from $47. Additionally, he’s now giving away $1 million a day through Nov. 5 to a random signer.
This week, America PAC also launched an “election integrity community” to “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities” that they see.
America PAC’s spending on X was disclosed on Monday after the company had fallen behind on its political advertising reports, which are generally done every two business days. Facebook and Google update their political advertising libraries in near real-time.
X isn’t legally required to update the database, but it’s become an expected practice for the company and tech peers.
Social media companies like Meta first started disclosing details about political marketing after Russia-linked groups bought ads during the 2016 election. Meta unveiled its ads library to improve transparency in 2018 and has made it broadly available. Twitter announced its own library that year, but then banned political ads entirely in 2019 — a decision that was reversed shortly after Musk acquired the company in late 2022.
This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
