There is an “upfront” season for advertisers on television - it’s late spring/early summer as the networks roll out their new series for the Fall Season. (That is being eroded by streaming, of course, but the “upfront” ad gaggle still exists.)
What I did not know is that there is also an “upfront” season for online - and it’s going on now. I don’t know a lot about it, except I am told it mirrors the TV upfront (where 50-80% of future inventory is committed.)
Again, I have no idea what the percentages of budgets being committed are, but whatever they are, it’s not a good time for Twitter to be melting down. If Musk thinks “ah, this will go away as soon as we fix it”, well, no, because the contracts for a lot of next year are being let even as we speak.
There will be “scatter” advertising, of course, and maybe Twitter can put itself back together in time to capture some of that (I doubt it, given the firing of both content moderators and the sales executives who knew the national advertisers) so I’m gonna guess the road is more uphill and steeper than even the most pessimistic news stories are presenting, at least for the next 6-12 months.
Sometimes it’s good to move “not so fast” and “break fewer things.”