X spent 2025 asking advertisers to come back. In 2026 it rebuilt what they come back to. On 30 April X announced what it called the biggest overhaul of its ad platform in its 20-year history, with ad matching built on retrieval and ranking systems from xAI, the AI company that owns it. Most of this year's other changes follow from that.
What changed in 2026
- February: ads accept 4:5 (1440 by 1800) and 2:3 (1080 by 1620) images as well as 1:1, 16:9, 9:16 and 1.91:1, so creative made for Instagram or Pinterest can run without recropping.
- April: the rebuilt Ads Manager, rolling out in phases, with contextual and semantic matching of ads to posts and people.
- June: a no-code setup for the X Pixel and Conversions API through Google Tag Manager, Conversions API resources in Events Manager, and live diagnostics of event health.
- July: Grok inside Ads Manager, in beta for selected advertisers, answering strategy questions and suggesting creative. And Mentions Boost, which lets businesses on Premium Business pay to boost organic posts that mention them, with a button.
- August: lead generation ads returned, with native forms and pre-filled fields, on image, video, carousel and Timeline Takeover ads. An X Ads MCP server lets AI assistants read campaign data, and an API lets brands build chatbot accounts in direct messages.
- September: a Cashtag Partner Program in the US added a trade button to posts about stocks and crypto.
X still has no minimum spend, and the minimum bid is one US cent. Dynamic product ads and the Conversions API remain available.
Mentions Boost, and a question of consent
Mentions Boost lets a brand promote a customer's or creator's post about it. According to trade reports, the person who wrote the post is not paid, and X has not said how consent or labelling will work. Before boosting anyone's post, get their permission in writing, pay creators for usage as you would for any ad, and make sure the result is labelled as an ad.
Grok and brand safety
X now uses Grok as a brand safety layer. Its brand suitability playbook, reported in March 2026, says Grok reviews posts for suitability and that profile ads only run on profiles Grok has vetted. X claims brand safety above 99 percent and suitability above 97 percent, citing combined data from X, IAS and DoubleVerify. IAS extended its measurement to X profiles in January 2026, and DoubleVerify measures in parallel.
Ads inside Grok's answers are not sold. SpaceX's listing document in May 2026 described them as a possible future opportunity and said advertisers cannot currently buy placements in Grok. Articles saying Grok ads are live are wrong.
The ad business, from X's own filings
X is now part of SpaceX, which publishes accounts. They show X's ad revenue at 710 million dollars in the first half of 2026, down from 870 million a year earlier, and 367 million in the second quarter against 426 million. SpaceX's listing document put X's 2025 ad revenue at 1.8 billion dollars and its monthly users at 550 million in March 2026, and blamed the first-quarter dip on the platform rebuild.
Advertiser sentiment is split. X's head of advertising, Monique Pintarelli, said in January that 97 of its top 100 advertisers had returned; Sensor Tower data in the same Digiday report found only six of the top 100 spent more in 2025 than in 2022. A leaked deck in March offered returning advertisers 50 percent added value, up to 200,000 dollars each. Kantar's 2025 survey found a net 29 percent of marketers planned to cut X spend in 2026. X's lawsuit against the World Federation of Advertisers was dismissed in March 2026 and settled in July.
What it means in the Gulf
X's reach in Saudi Arabia remains large. DataReportal's reading of X's ad tools at the end of 2025 put it at about 15 million people, 43 percent of the population, against about 2.85 million in the UAE, though both fell 6 to 7 percent over the year. The Cashtag program is US only; X has not said where its other new features are limited, so check in the account.
- Reuse 4:5 creative from other platforms instead of recropping.
- Set up the Conversions API through Google Tag Manager, and check event health before launch.
- Try lead generation ads for B2B, real estate and education clients.
- Agree brand safety settings with the client, and record them in the campaign notes.
The ad mockup generator on this site shows an ad in the X timeline, with its website card, before it runs.
