Brand Safety Lessons from X for UK Small Businesses

X’s UK revenue didn’t just “dip” in 2024 — it fell 58.3%, from £69.1m to £28.9m, according to filings at Companies House (year ending 31 Dec 2024). That’s what happens when major advertisers decide the risk isn’t worth it.

If you’re a UK small business, you might read that and think: fine, that’s X’s problem and big brands’ budgets. I don’t see it that way. The lesson isn’t “never advertise on X”. The lesson is that platform instability and brand-safety risk can wipe out marketing performance overnight — and you don’t control the rules.

This matters even more in the Climate Change & Net Zero Transition space, where scrutiny is intense. Whether you’re a solar installer, a retrofit provider, an EV charging business, a sustainable fashion brand, or a consultancy helping SMEs measure emissions, your reputation is part of the product. A single ad placement next to toxic content, misinformation, or illegal imagery can undo months of trust-building.

What X’s revenue drop really signals (and why you should care)

Answer first: The 58% revenue fall is a market signal that advertisers are pricing in brand safety risk and moderation uncertainty—and pulling spend when they can’t be confident about where their ads appear.

In the filing quoted by Marketing Week, X attributed the downturn primarily to a reduction in spend from large advertisers due to “concerns about brand safety, reputation and/or content moderation.” Pre-tax profits dropped too, from £2.2m to £767k, and UK headcount continued to fall (sales and marketing down from 59 to 37; total staff 114 to 76).

For small businesses, the exact numbers matter less than the mechanism:

• Ad inventory is only valuable when brands trust the environment.
• When trust drops, performance drops (higher CPMs for worse placements, weaker conversion rates, more refund disputes).
• When a platform is under regulatory and media scrutiny, uncertainty rises and advertisers become more conservative.

And the moderation story isn’t abstract. The article references criticism about X’s AI tool Grok being used to create sexually explicit and violent imagery of women and girls, and that Ofcom made contact relating to the Online Safety Act and illegal deepfake images. Whether you advertise there or not, this is the direction of travel: advertisers increasingly expect provable safeguards, not promises.

Brand safety isn’t “big brand stuff” — it’s budget protection

Answer first: Brand safety is a direct ROI issue for SMEs because you don’t have spare cash for wasted impressions or reputation repair.

Large brands can pause spend and shift millions elsewhere. Small businesses often run on tight monthly targets. If a campaign goes sideways, it’s not a minor blip — it’s payroll stress.

The hidden cost: reputation drag

Most small-business owners think in clicks and leads. But brand safety failures create a slower, nastier problem: reputation drag. You feel it as:

• fewer people replying to quotes
• higher price sensitivity (“Can you knock a bit off?”)
• lower referral rates
• more time explaining what you stand for

If your business touches net zero and sustainability, you’ve also got a double exposure:

1. Greenwashing suspicion is already high. Your messaging will be judged.
2. Polarisation is real. Climate, energy bills, clean air zones, ESG, and regulation can trigger hostile content environments.

Practical brand-safety rules for SME paid social

You don’t need a compliance department. You do need a checklist:

1. Define “unsafe adjacency” for your brand. Example: hate speech, sexual content, violent content, climate misinformation, extremist politics.
2. Use exclusions and inventory controls wherever the platform offers them (even basic keyword/topic exclusions help).
3. Start with small test budgets and short learning windows (7–14 days), then scale.
4. Watch placement reports, not just results dashboards.
5. Document your decisions (what you excluded and why). If something goes wrong, you’ll act faster.

Platform instability is now a planning assumption, not a surprise

Answer first: You should assume at least one of your marketing channels will become less reliable this year — through policy shifts, moderation changes, targeting limitations, or public controversy.

Marketers have always dealt with algorithm updates, but what’s changed is the speed and scale of reputational swings. A platform can go from “viable channel” to “board-level risk” quickly. Even if your own ads are clean, the context can turn ugly.

Here’s how I’d plan marketing for 2026 if I were running a small UK business:

Build a “portfolio”, not a dependency

Treat channels like investments. Over-exposure is what hurts.

A sensible portfolio might look like:

• Owned: website, SEO content, email list, case studies, downloadable guides
• Search intent: Google Ads / Microsoft Ads for high-intent queries
• Social: one or two platforms that fit your audience, used deliberately
• Partnerships: local trade bodies, green business networks, referral partners

If one platform becomes unstable, you still have momentum.

Use paid social for distribution — but keep the asset in-house

Post on social, yes. But keep your core content (guides, calculators, explainer pages, comparison pages) on your website.

For net zero and sustainability businesses, owned content does double duty:

• It generates leads via SEO for queries like “heat pump installer [city]”, “solar payback UK 2026”, “SME carbon footprint reporting”.
• It builds trust with evidence: accreditations, methodologies, before/after case studies, measured outcomes.

The net zero angle: trust is your most valuable marketing asset

Answer first: In climate and net zero markets, trust converts better than hype — and brand-safe environments help you earn it.

The climate transition is full of legitimate opportunity (retrofit, renewables, fleet electrification, energy efficiency, green skills), but it’s also full of noise. People have been burned by exaggerated savings claims, unclear finance offers, and “eco” messaging that doesn’t stand up.

That’s why I’m opinionated on this: small businesses should spend less time chasing “reach” and more time building proof.

What “proof-led marketing” looks like

If you sell a product or service connected to net zero, build marketing around:

• Measured outcomes (kWh saved, emissions reduced, running cost reduction)
• Plain-English assumptions (tariff used, property type, system size)
• Real photos and real projects (with permission)
• Transparent pricing ranges (even if final pricing varies)
• Aftercare and maintenance (what happens after install?)

That content performs well in search and is resilient when social platforms get messy.

A simple example: redirecting spend without losing leads

Say you currently spend £1,000/month on paid social because it “sort of works.” If the platform becomes risky or performance drops, don’t just turn the ads off and hope.

Redirect like this:

1. Put £300 into a “pillar page” on your website (a proper guide with FAQs and proof).
2. Put £300 into Google Search ads for bottom-of-funnel queries.
3. Put £200 into retargeting (only to people who visited your site).
4. Put £200 into an email capture offer (e.g., “Retrofit cost checklist” or “Solar quote comparison sheet”).

You’ll end up with fewer vanity impressions and more controllable demand.

A brand-safe marketing plan you can implement this month

Answer first: The most reliable way to reduce platform risk is to strengthen owned channels and set clear controls on any paid media you run.

Use this as a practical starting point:

1) Own your narrative (website + SEO)

• Publish 2 high-intent pages: one service page and one “cost/benefit” explainer.
• Add 3 credibility blocks to every service page: accreditation, case study, and process.
• Include a single strong conversion path: call booking or quote request.

2) Create a brand safety policy (one page)

Write a short internal policy that covers:

• which platforms you will/won’t use
• what content adjacency is unacceptable
• what you’ll do if an incident happens (pause ads, screenshots, report, refund requests)

This sounds formal, but it saves you time and panic later.

3) Use paid media where you can control context

• Prioritise search when you need predictable lead flow.
• Use social for retargeting and distribution, not as your only demand source.
• Keep tests small, and scale only when results hold for 2–4 weeks.

4) Capture demand you already paid for

If you’re spending on any platform, make sure you have:

• email capture (with a useful reason to subscribe)
• fast landing pages
• strong follow-up (same day)

Most lead-gen problems aren’t “traffic” problems. They’re follow-up problems.

A simple stance: if a platform can change the rules overnight, don’t build your pipeline on it.

Where this leaves X — and where it leaves you

X’s UK revenue drop in 2024 is a clean example of how fast advertiser confidence can evaporate when moderation and brand safety are in doubt. Whether X rebounds or not, the bigger trend is set: brands want predictable environments, transparency, and controls.

For UK small businesses—especially those trading on trust in the net zero transition—the winning approach is to put your foundations where you have control: your website, your content, your email list, your proof. Then use platforms as distribution channels, not as the home of your marketing.

If one of your channels became unusable next week, would you still hit your lead target? That’s the question worth answering before you increase spend anywhere.