X's ad revenue reaches $367 million in Q2, $713 million below 2022 level
X's second-quarter advertising revenue reached $367 million, tucked into SpaceX's AI Segment category in the company's earnings report. That is up from the $343 million reported for the prior quarter, before SpaceX became a publicly traded company, and represents an $83 million year-over-year decline. The gap to X's pre-Musk era is far wider: Twitter posted $1.08 billion in ad revenue for the second quarter of 2022, roughly $713 million more than X brought in for the same three months this year. SpaceX CFO Bret Johnsen credited the quarterly gain to an overhauled ad-tech platform, and the report pointed to an increase in subscription revenue from the ad-free Premium+ tier.
Quarterly revenue of $962 million from SpaceX's space division and $4.3 billion from Starlink dwarfs what X brings in, a sign of how small a piece of Musk's business the platform has become. Media buyers comparing platforms for reach and pricing get less visibility into X's ad performance than before: SpaceX's earnings calls and filings treat the ad business as a footnote inside a much larger space and AI story.