X (Twitter) Ads for Small Businesses

Is your account eligible?

Everything below comes from the X Ads Help Center and X's advertising policy pages. Check eligibility first, because it is stricter than on most ad platforms. X states that "your account must be verified through one of the following programs": Verified Organizations for businesses and government entities, or X Premium for individuals. Other conditions on the same page:

• Public posts. X says "Posts from an advertiser account must be public." Protected accounts cannot advertise, and neither can deactivated or suspended ones.
• Profile quality. Profile and header photos must not be GIFs, and the bio needs "a functional, live URL" that is not gated and accurately represents your brand and what you promote.
• Language. Ads targeting certain countries must be in the local language of those countries.
• Countries. Self-serve advertising is open in the countries and territories X lists. Sanctioned jurisdictions are excluded, and X may pause ads to or from a location during a sensitive event.

Review covers the whole profile: X notes that compliance "includes, but is not limited to bio, username, handle, profile image, header image, and bio URL."

Setting up the ads account

Your X Ads account is tied to the handle you create it from, and ads show as promoted by that handle. So log in to your business account, not a personal one, then go to ads.x.com. X says there is no difference in the sign-up process between personal and business accounts; the difference is how you use the account.

Two fields are permanent. You choose a country, which sets the billing currency, and a time zone, which sets how results are reported. X states: "You cannot change these values once you've created your account." Changing them means asking support for a new ads account, adding a new payment method and moving campaigns over yourself, since existing campaigns are not copied automatically.

X also recommends linking the account to a company domain email address, using strong unique passwords and login verification, and naming one person with authority to create and manage campaigns. If several people will run ads, set up multi-user access rather than sharing a login.

Objectives and what you pay for

Every campaign starts with an objective, and the objective decides what you are charged for. X says: "You'll only be charged when someone takes that action." The objectives X lists:

• Reach: as many unique people as possible within budget; you pay for impressions (CPM).
• Video Views: served to people most likely to watch; impressions (CPM) or video views (CPV).
• Pre-Roll Views: your video before publisher and creator content; pre-roll views (CPV).
• App Installs: ads link to your app store listing; you pay for app clicks.
• Engagement: likes, reposts, replies and profile visits; you pay for engagements.
• Website Traffic: people most likely to click through to your site; impressions (CPM) or link clicks (CPC).

For a small business selling a service, Website Traffic is usually the starting point, measured against leads or sales tracked with the X Pixel (see below). Reach and Video Views suit awareness work where you accept that results show up later, if at all, in other channels. X Ads run in an auction, and for most objectives you choose how to bid.

Budgets, dates and frequency caps

X says "there's no minimum campaign spend". You set a daily budget during set-up, and X says it will never go over it. Dates and budgets live at the ad group level: "A campaign will begin when its first ad group starts and it will end when its last ad group concludes." Each ad group either starts immediately and runs indefinitely (the default) or runs between set start and end dates. You can also add a spend cap so an ad group never spends more than a set total.

There is no ad scheduling by hour. X answers the question of uneven daily spend directly: advertisers "cannot choose specifically the time of the day their ads serve". If you only want ads during opening hours, X is not the platform for that.

Frequency caps limit how many impressions one person sees per ad group, over 24 hours, 7 days or 30 days (X's example: up to 2 impressions every 7 days). They are available for the Reach, Engagement, Video Views and Pre-Roll Views objectives, not Website Traffic.

Targeting

X groups its targeting options into demographics (location, language, gender, age, operating system, device, carrier), audience features (interests, keywords, follower look-alikes, retargeting people who saw or engaged with past posts) and your own audiences (customer lists and website activity audiences built from the X Pixel).

Interest and follower look-alikes targeting are the two most useful for small advertisers:

• Interests: X offers 80+ interest categories, inferred from signals such as who people follow and what they repost, click and post.
• Follower look-alikes: enter an @handle to reach people with interests similar to that account's followers. X suggests aiming for "around 30 @handles per campaign", choosing handles closely tied to your business rather than very famous accounts, and splitting campaigns by category, for example competitors in one and industry media in another.
• How they combine: interests and look-alikes are additive (OR), so each one you add widens the audience. Location, gender, age and language are AND conditions and always apply on top.

One setting needs attention before launch. Optimized Targeting lets X reach people beyond your chosen audience when it predicts better results, and X says it "is pre-selected for all campaigns as a default". Gender, location, language, OS, device and exclusions are always respected; other selections are treated flexibly, and any flexibility on age is limited to 25+. In the Simple Ads flow it cannot be turned off, so use the Advanced campaign flow if you want to test only your own targeting.

Housing and credit advertisers have extra rules. Under X's housing and credit policy, offers of housing (including realtor services, home insurance and mortgage brokerage) and offers of credit need pre-approval through certification, and cannot target by age, sex, language, precise location at ZIP code level and other listed characteristics. X says this policy "applies to the US and Canada only."

Ad formats and specs

X ads are posts, so the plain text ad has the same 280-character limit as any post; X's creative ad specs note that each link uses 23 of those characters. The formats a small business will use most:

• Image ads: 1200 x 1200 pixels recommended for 1:1 and 1200 x 628 for 1.91:1, with 4:5, 2:3, 16:9 and 9:16 also supported. Image files up to 5MB.
• Video ads: MP4 or MOV, up to 1 GB, up to 2 minutes 20 seconds, with 1:1 and 16:9 the common sizes.
• Website card: an image or video with a headline (70 characters) that links to your page; the URL must begin with http:// or https://.
• Carousels: swipeable images or videos; keep the aspect ratio consistent across cards.
• App buttons and Dynamic Product Ads for app and catalogue advertisers.

X's own creative advice in its campaign basics: keep "3-5 creative options in rotation at any given time", and it says videos "between 6-15 seconds long with captions and prominent branding perform best".

X Pixel and Conversion API

X offers two conversion tracking options: the X Pixel, a tag on your website, and the Conversion API, a server-to-server connection. X says it is "critical to implement at least one of these options in order to unlock the full capabilities of web campaigns", and recommends the Pixel for most advertisers.

• Where to set it up: Tools, then Events Manager, in ads.x.com. X notes the Tools tab may not appear until a credit card is added.
• Base code: goes before the closing head tag on every page, directly or through a supported tag manager. It auto-creates Site Visit and Landing Page View events.
• Event code: one per action you care about, such as Lead or Purchase. X advises using each conversion type only once on your site, because duplicates split the signal and weaken optimisation.
• Pixel and API together: X strongly recommends a deduplication key, the conversion_id parameter, so a conversion is not counted twice.
• Checking it works: Events Manager shows Active (activity in the last 24 hours), No recent activity or Inactive; the Recent Activity Log shows the events and parameters received, and the X Pixel Helper Chrome extension reports errors. X says reporting "is finalized within 24-48 hours".

If your site already runs a consent banner, load the X Pixel under the same consent rules as your other marketing tags. Our cookie consent guide covers how that works.

Ad review and policy

X has two kinds of ad review. Promoted posts can be marked for review once you add them to a campaign; posts in review cannot run, and a disapproved post cannot be used in X Ads at all (it stays visible to your followers as a normal post). Accounts can also be reviewed when they sign up and at any time while advertising, and X says account review "pauses any previously active ad campaigns". If an account is disapproved, all its campaigns stop. To check status or ask for an expedited review, file a ticket through the Help button in ads.x.com.

X's advertising policies have separate rules for adult content, alcohol, deceptive and fraudulent content, drugs, financial products and services, gambling, healthcare and pharmaceuticals, political content, content for minors, tobacco, weapons, and a quality policy. Read the page for your industry before you write the ad, not after a rejection.

Before you launch

• Business handle verified (Verified Organizations or X Premium), posts public, no GIF profile or header photo, live bio URL.
• Ads account created from the business handle, with the right country and time zone (both permanent).
• Objective chosen for what you can measure: usually Website Traffic for a service business.
• X Pixel base code on every page, one event per conversion, status Active in Events Manager.
• Optimized Targeting left on or turned off on purpose, using the Advanced flow if you want it off.
• 3-5 creatives ready, sized to X's specs, landing page fast and consistent with the ad (see our landing page guide).
• Industry policy page read, housing or credit certification done if it applies.

If you are deciding where to spend first, compare X with our guides to Meta ads, LinkedIn ads and Reddit ads, and use UTM tracking links so GA4 compares results across platforms on the same terms.

Frequently asked questions

Do I need a verified account to advertise on X?

Yes. X's eligibility page says an advertiser account must be verified through Verified Organizations (for businesses and government entities) or X Premium (for individuals), and its posts must be public.

Is there a minimum budget for X ads?

No. X says there is no minimum campaign spend. You set a daily budget for each ad group and X says it will not go over it; you can add a total spend cap as well.

Can I change the currency or time zone of my X Ads account?

No. The country (which sets the billing currency) and the time zone cannot be changed after the account is created. You would need to ask X support for a new ads account and move your campaigns yourself.

Can I run X ads only during business hours?

No. X says advertisers cannot choose the time of day their ads serve. You can set start and end dates per ad group, but not hours.

What is Optimized Targeting on X?

A setting, on by default, that lets X show your ads to people beyond your chosen targeting when it predicts better results. Location, gender, language, device and exclusions are always respected. It cannot be turned off in the Simple Ads flow, so use the Advanced flow if you want it off.

Do I need the X Pixel?

For website campaigns you should use the X Pixel or the Conversion API; X calls at least one of them critical for web campaigns and recommends the Pixel for most advertisers. If you use both, send a conversion_id so conversions are not counted twice.

Want landing pages that turn ad clicks into enquiries? See our website development service and all our services, or email [email protected].