Linda Yaccarino, CEO of X (the platform formerly known as Twitter), doesn’t know whether X owner Elon Musk and Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg will ever step into the steel cage to spar. But “what a great brand sponsorship opportunity,” Yaccarino said Thursday on CNBC’s “Squawk Box.”

Yaccarino, who joined Musk at X in May, has been busy thinking up advertising opportunities for the polarizing platform she joined to rebuild relationships with brands, so it’s no surprise she’s imagining the marketing appeal of a billionaire brawl. (Musk and Zuckerberg have been trading online barbs about lining up a real fight.)

Yaccarino was asked about that potential distraction and a wide range of questions in her first TV interview since joining X. She revealed how she spent her first eight weeks at X, which rebranded from Twitter during that time, and defended the company and its pugilistic owner. Yaccarino also said she has been making headway in restoring advertising interest on the site, and separately announced on Thursday that the platform would bring back its client council, an advisory board of top brands that Musk had disbanded. 

After Musk bought Twitter in October, a rush of advertisers headed for the exits amid safety warnings about his policies, which is an image Yaccarino has been trying to counter. The move to reconstitute the advisory board made up of major marketers is part of Yaccarino’s carefully calibrated rapprochement with advertisers. Yaccarino claimed it’s working. “Coca-Cola, Visa, State Farm is a huge partner,” Yaccarino said. “They’re coming back.”

For the last eight weeks, Yaccarino has been in conversations with CMOs and CEOs, “and we cover a lot of ground,” she said. “And I focus on those [brands] that have either paused or reduced spending, remind them about the power of the platform and the power of the user base and the economic potential of them partnering with us again.”

In recent months, X has said that 99.9% of impressions on the site are for posts that fall within the company’s guidelines. Marketers have expressed concerns about showing up against material that could be considered offensive or worse, but X has claimed the site is safer than it was prior to its $44 billion sale to Musk. X has developed new “adjacency” controls, which gives advertisers some ability to steer clear of accounts and keywords they don’t want to support.

Some marketers have told Ad Age those controls are not always as robust as they could be. This week, Twitter announced that it had expanded a partnership with Integral Ad Science, a third-party verification firm, which will vet ad inventory for advertisers before the campaigns run. Integral Ad Science previously conducted audits for brands that gave reports about the safety of campaigns after they ran. Twitter also works with DoubleVerify, another third-party measurement service.

Also read: How Twitter pitched brand safety at Cannes

During her interview, Yaccarino said she has told marketers not to sleep on the power of X to shape the online conversation, pointing directly to the success of “Barbenheimer,” a meme that went viral on Twitter surrounding the same-day releases of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

“Not that X is taking credit for all of that success, but that’s where the conversation started,” Yaccarino said.

Read more about 'Barbie' marketing here

There is no denying the company formerly known as Twitter has a massive role to play online and in moments of real-time conversations around sports, movies and politics. But brands have watched as Musk has injected a bit of chaos into the platform. And now he’s even changed the name of the site, and Yaccarino said she was on board with that rebrand. “If you stay Twitter, or you stay whatever your previous brand is, change tends to be only incremental, and you get graded by a legacy report card,” Yaccarino said.