Elon Musk reflects on advertising at Cannes Lions 2024

In November of last year, while participating in a conference, Elon Musk, Chief Technology Officer of X – formerly Twitter – told advertisers: “fuck you”. She said it at a time when some brands had abandoned the advertising on the platform as a result of the support that the manager had shown for a comment that was described as anti-Semitic, something that he considered a boycott and blackmail movement.
The interview that Mark Red, CEO. from WPP, has made him in Cannes Lions 2024 It started precisely there.

“It was not a comment directed at the advertising industry in general”; Musk pointed out before a packed Palais and before someone who has defended freedom of expression on the social network. “It is important to have a platform where everyone can express their opinions. Advertisers have the right to appear alongside content that fits their brands, but what is wrong is trying to remove all content that does not fit them from the platform. Some advertisers seek to censor those opinions, but we will never choose their money over freedom of expression”.

Elon Musk thus reiterated, once again, that the freedom of expression It is the priority of the platform, which aspires to be a digital public square in which everyone, without crossing the limits of the law, can express their opinions. However, he assured that he understood the importance of brand safety for advertisers and showed that brands have the right to choose the content to appear next to that best suits them.

The manager, however, He has never been a defender of advertising. At the beginning of last year he expressed that the ads on Twitter were too frequent and large, and in fact, his multiple businesses, including SpaceX, Tesla and Starlink, have barely relied on advertising. What’s more, it may be that more than one person has wondered why Musk intervenes at Cannes Lions, the International Festival of Creativity, considering, on the one hand, his position, and on the other, that part of the X model consists of offering a premium subscription that eliminates ads.

In this regard, Musk has stated that he is in favor of advertising that is close to the content, understood as those advertisements about products or services that are shown to the user considering their interests. “There is a wide range of advertising, from spam to content. I am a fan of advertising that is interesting on an artistic level, that is entertaining, that you do not regret seeing when the ad ends.”, he commented.

“I think it really works when the ad is nice and entertaining, when it feels good to have seen it, even if you are not going to buy the product later.” he said, thus defending, before an audience made up of creatives, the importance of creating advertising strategies that are integrated into the nature of the platform and its audienceagainst intrusive messages.

Mark Read asked the manager about his plans to make X an advertising-friendly space and an advertiser-friendly one. Musk assured that in the previous version of the platform, before he acquired it, there was no targeting or a relationship between ads and users; and that in recent months the company Advertising technology has improved a lot.

“We have greatly improved ad matching with the user and we are evolving towards a system based on artificial intelligence, in such a way that the more the user uses the platform, the more the content will correlate with their interests and behaviors.”he explained. “We are very focused on having ads that are shown to people who might find those ads interesting”.

Furthermore, Elon Musk has spoken about…

The CEO of WPP has also asked Elon Musk about his vision of artificial intelligence, knowing that the manager has expressed on more than one occasion his caution regarding technology, its risks and negative applications. In this sense, the CTO of era of abundance, where products and services will be available to everyone; but at the same time towards a crisis of meaningan existential crisis derived from the fact that AI can undertake the same tasks and functions as humans and even better.

Asked if artificial intelligence could become creative, he joked to the audience saying that “I didn’t want to spoil the party”. “I believe that artificial intelligence will improve human intelligence and expand creativity”, he predicted. “In the most positive scenario, it will be like having a magical genie to help us. We are in a very interesting time, but we have to be cautious not to drift into a negative scenario”.

He has also ventured radical changes within a period of five years derived from the development of artificial intelligence. Among them, the form of search for information on the internet or journalism, that will be affected by the way AI is adding the “collective wisdom” in real time, leaving behind the way content is consumed.

Elon Musk, who is also CEO of Tesla, SpaceX, Neuralink and The Boring Company, has taken advantage of his intervention and his time at Cannes Lions to express his vision on other topics and issues of interest. Among them, a future in which humanoid robots will be normalized, both in the daily and professional spheres – especially at the level of production – or the possibility of becoming a interplanetary civilization thanks to the exploration, first of Mars and, later, of other solar systems. He also speculated about the fluidity of consciousness and the symbiosis between humans and artificial intelligence, citing the advances made with Neuralink chips and implants.

“I believe that technology will allow us to do everything we want and more”concluded Elon Musk. “We are heading into a very interesting future and this is one of the most interesting times in history. So let’s enjoy the journey”.