Every ad format on X, and when to use which
There are only a handful of ways to buy attention on X. Knowing what each one is good at saves more money than any bidding trick.
Most format arguments are really objective arguments. Pick what the campaign is for, and the format usually picks itself. Here is each one, what it does well, and the moment it stops being the right answer.
Promoted posts
A promoted post is an ordinary post with budget behind it. It sits in the timeline between posts from accounts people chose to follow, and it carries the same reply, repost and like controls as any other post. It is always labelled as an ad.
That ordinariness is the point. A promoted post is the only format where the audience can talk back in public, which makes it the honest test of a message: if nobody replies, reposts or saves, the message is not landing.
Use it when you want reach with a conversation attached, when you are testing what a new audience responds to, or when the post already earned attention organically and deserves more of it.
Promoted posts come in a few shapes:
- Image. One frame, fast. The workhorse for offers and announcements.
- Video. Motion in the timeline, usually watched without sound.
- Carousel. Several cards in one post, each with its own headline and link. Good for a range of products, a step-by-step, or one idea told in three beats.
- Text only. No image at all. Occasionally the strongest thing you can run, because it looks exactly like what people came to read.
Vertical video
Vertical video fills the screen. There is no timeline around it and nothing else competing for the eye, so the first second carries far more weight than it does in the feed.
Shoot or cut it at 9:16, put the message in the first frame, and caption everything. Most of this is watched with the sound off, so a video that needs audio to make sense is a video that does not make sense.
Use it for launches, for anything with a demonstration in it, and for app installs, where the install button sits right under the video.
Amplify pre-roll
Pre-roll puts your video in front of video from publishers — sport, news, entertainment — so your brand borrows the moment that people came for. It is the closest thing on the platform to a television buy, and it behaves like one: predictable, adjacent to known content, and priced accordingly.
Cut a landscape version specifically for it. A vertical cut squeezed into a landscape slot looks like a mistake, and viewers read a technical mistake as carelessness about everything else.
Timeline and Trend Takeovers
The takeovers are the big instruments. A Timeline Takeover puts your ad in the first slot of the timeline for a day. A Trend Takeover puts your brand at the top of what people are talking about, where curiosity is already pointed.
They are day-shaped, not campaign-shaped. They work when there is something genuinely worth interrupting for: a launch, an event, the day your news breaks. Spending a takeover on a message that could have run all month is the most expensive way to be ignored.
Plan them with something to catch the attention they create. A takeover sends a wave of people to look at you; the rest of the campaign is what happens when they arrive.
Choosing, quickly
A short way through it:
- You want to be known. Vertical video and pre-roll, with a frequency cap, measured in views.
- You want a conversation. Promoted posts and carousels, measured in replies and reposts.
- You want visits. Promoted posts with a website card, measured with the pixel.
- You want sales or sign-ups. Website cards and carousels, measured with the Conversions API.
- You have one day that matters. A takeover, with promoted posts and video behind it for the rest of the week.
The test that settles most arguments
Run the two formats you are arguing about, at the same budget, against the same audience, with the same message. Give them long enough to leave the noise behind, then let the result decide. Most format debates are settled faster by a week of data than by another meeting.
A campaign is rarely one format anyway. The takeover makes the noise, the video explains, the promoted posts keep the conversation alive, and the carousel does the selling. The skill is not picking the best format; it is knowing which job each one is doing.