- Account setup – Get X Premium verified and add a payment method
- Install the X pixel – Add tracking code to your website and create a signup event
- Configure your campaign – Choose web traffic objective with conversion optimization
- Set targeting – Use follower lookalikes and keywords to reach your audience
- Create 3 ads – Test different copy and images with website cards
👋 Hello!
I’ve managed millions in ad spend over my career and one the most powerful moves I ever made was creating quickstart campaign guides for each ad network.
They helped me start campaigns without having to do much thinking and forced me to keep the base of my campaigns consistent, which made it easier to test campaign changes and new features.
I recently updated my X quickstart guide for 2026 and streamlined it to make it more beginner friendly.
The guide isn’t meant to get you set up with the best campaign possible. It’s meant to get you set up as quickly as possible (with a really solid campaign!).
It’s very opinionated and meant to reduce the amount of choices you have to make outside of your budget, ad copy, and targeting.
Questions about X ads?
If you have any questions about this guide or X ads in general, reach out to me on X.
Table of Contents
X Ad Campaign Quickstart
Intro
This guide will help you set up and launch a X campaign for your SaaS product as quickly as possible.
The process in this guide will go faster and be more effective if you have any of the following ready:
- A list of influential X users your audience follows
- Existing messaging even if it’s just your product’s three strongest selling points
- A list of keywords your audience is likely to mention or search for (these need to be more general and on the larger side to work for a X ad campaign)
- Audience demographics
Teaching you the X ad interface is not one of my goals for this guide, so I’ve included links that will send you directly to a page or form instead of having you navigate around the interface to get there.
When you have some time after your campaign is launched, you should click around and get to know the interface.
>> Note: When I go through x.com/home to get to the ad interface, I often get distracted by my home feed. If you do too, I recommend adding a direct link to ads.x.com as a bookmark in your usual browser and doing the same for any other social networks you advertise on.
X Ad Basics
If you haven’t seen an X ad before, they are pretty similar to in-feed Facebook and Linkedin ads. Here are the basics to get familiar with:
- Types – X allows you to run text, image, carousel (multi-image), and video ads.
- Placements – You have the option to show your ads on home timelines, profiles, in search results, around replies, and around X’s media viewer.
- Ad engagement – When your ad is liked, retweeted, replied to, or clicked on, X considers it an engagement. Clicks anywhere on the post count, including reposts, replies, follows, likes, post expansions, and clicks on links, cards, embedded media, your username, and your profile photo.
Account eligibility and verification
For your account to be eligible to run ads, you need profile and header photos that are not GIFs and “a functional, live URL in your bio that is not gated, and accurately represents your brand and product”.
You also need to be on a X Premium plan and verified to run ads. First you purchase a plan, then you go through X’s verification process, which can take a few days.
You can find the full list of ad eligibility details here.
Set up a payment method
We need a credit card set up to pay for ads. To set up your payment method, log into your X and go directly to the “Add a new credit card” form with this URL:
ads.x.com/billing/[your-ad-account-id]/payment_methods/?open_cc_form=true
(just replace [your-ad-account-id] with your ad account id)
This is a separate billing management interface from what you use for Premium and you can use a different card here if you want.
The X pixel
Like Facebook and Google, X uses a pixel that you install on your website to track user actions once someone has left X to visit your site.
This is how X tracks ad conversions which it requires to optimize for signups.
It also tracks logged-in X users who visit your site to create an audience that you can advertise to once enough users are added.
You have 3 ways to install your pixel:
- With the pixel’s code
- With a tag manager like Google Tag Manager
- With X’s conversion API
In this guide, we’re going to install using the pixel’s code.
First, go to the Events Manager with this URL:
ads.x.com/conversion_events/[your-ad-account-id]/events_manager (just replace [your-ad-account-id] with your ad account id)
If you’re on the right page, you’ll see the section above towards the top left. Click on “View X pixel” to see your pixel code.
It will look like this:
<!-- X conversion tracking base code -->
<script>
!function(e,t,n,s,u,a){e.twq||(s=e.twq=function(){s.exe?s.exe.apply(s,arguments):s.queue.push(arguments);
},s.version='1.1',s.queue=[],u=t.createElement(n),u.async=!0,u.src='https://static.ads-twitter.com/uwt.js',
a=t.getElementsByTagName(n)[0],a.parentNode.insertBefore(u,a))}(window,document,'script');
twq('config','[insert your pixel id]');
</script>
<!-- End X conversion tracking base code -->Paste it before the </head> HTML tag of any page you install it on.
I recommend installing it on all public pages on your website so you can capture a larger audience to use with future ad campaigns, but you may have different tracking preferences.
At the least, install it on your campaign landing page and the URL that immediately follows someone signing up for your SaaS product.
Once your change is live, check that your pixel is installed correctly with X’s Pixel Helper extension.
Create a Signup Event
Sign up events are what X uses to track which of the users who clicked your ad went on to sign up.
Once your pixel is installed and working, go to the event creation form with this URL:
ads.x.com/conversion_events/[your-ad-account-id]/events_manager/[your-pixel-id]/create_event#step1 (just replace [your-ad-account-id] with your ad account id and [your-pixel-id] with your pixel id.)
Event details
First, X has you fill out your event details. Name your event “Signup” and choose the “Start trial” Event type.
Sometimes a user will see an ad one day and sign up on a later day. Attribution window is the “time window for crediting X with conversions that happen after a person views or engages with your ads”.
We’re going with the attribution window defaults (30 days for post-engagement attribution and 1 day for post-view attribution) for this campaign.
We’ll also turn “website activity audience” on so that we can create an audience for a future ad campaign from our conversions once we have enough..
Setup Method
You can define your event with code or URL rules. Defining it with code gives us more options, so we’ll use that method for this campaign.
Just like with your pixel, you have the option of installing the event by adding code to your website, using a tag manager or using the conversion API.
We’ll add code to our website to stay consistent with how we installed the pixel.
It will look like this:
<!-- Twitter conversion tracking event code -->
<script type="text/javascript">
// Insert Twitter Event ID
twq('event', 'tw-[insert your pixel id]-[insert your event id]', {
});
</script>
<!-- End Twitter conversion tracking event code -->Campaign Setup
Now we’ll set up our campaign. This URL will take you to a screen where you choose what type of campaign to set up:
ads.x.com/reporting_dashboard/[your ad account id]/campaigns?modal=ads_flow_selector
(just replace [your-ad-account-id] with your ad account id)
Choose a Campaign
X offers two versions of its campaign creator; one for simple campaigns and one for advanced campaigns.
We’re going to set up an advanced campaign because the simple campaign builder doesn’t allow you to create conversion-based campaigns.
Choose your objective
X offers a number of different objective options. For this campaign, we’re going to choose the web traffic objective and pair it with a conversion event.
Campaign Details
Campaign name is optional, but I always add one to help keep things organized. Name your campaign Signup-1 or come up with your own.
Other campaign details options:
- Funding source – This is the credit card you added earlier.
- Campaign budget optimization – This for a campaign that has multiple ad groups and we’re only building one in this guide, so keep it off.
- Advanced -> Campaign spend cap – I don’t want the campaign to stop if it ends up performing well, so I don’t set one.
If you have any questions about this guide, reach out to me on X.
Ad Group Setup
Ad group details
For ad group details, we’re going to add Signup-1 as the Ad group name and keep dynamic product ads off.
Budget & Schedule
Have a daily budget in mind? If not, consider that it can take a couple of weeks for X’s algorithm to settle, so you’ll want to run the campaign for at least that long to make sure you’re not stopping it too early.
The algorithm also needs a minimum level of conversions each day to get enough data and run properly.
X isn’t public with website traffic campaign numbers, but 10 conversions a day should work for most startups with 5 a day being the floor.
Other budget and schedule options:
- Total spend – I don’t want the ad group to stop if it ends up working well, so I don’t set one.
- Start – I try not to start campaigns on Fridays or the weekends because the first day is often a throwaway as the algorithm adjusts and the weekends tend to have worse performance than weekdays.
- End – I run campaigns indefinitely because I don’t want to end it early if it’s working.
Delivery
This section looks intense, but it’s actually not that complicated. Here’s what what to do for each option:
- Goal – Pick site visits (recommended).
- Site visit event – Pick the Signup event you created.
- Bid strategy – I usually start with autobid and then try out different maximum bids later on.
- Pay by – Pick impression (recommended)
- Pacing – Pacing is the speed your budget is spent. We’re going to go with standard pacing because we’ll get more efficient results with X spending our daily budget evenly over the day.
- App conversions – This is for mobile apps, so we’ll ignore it.
- Measurement options – Skip these settings.
Placements
Placements are the areas where your ads show up on X. Your ads can show up on home timelines, on profiles, in search results, around replies and around X’s media viewer.
To maximize conversions, we’ll select all optional placements.
I haven’t made any adjustments to the account brand safety controls for my campaigns in the past, but you may have more restrictions in mind and prefer the conservative setting.
Audience estimate
The audience estimate panel estimates the number of X users in your audience and adjusts up or down based on what options you choose in the demographics, devices, audiences, and targeting features panels.
I’d suggest you aim for a minimum of a 500k audience estimate, but 100k would be the absolute floor I’d recommend you launch with.
Demographics
Demographics will depend on your audience demographics.
- Gender – I’ve never marketed a gender specific product, so I’ve always gone with any.
- Age – It depends on your product, but for early-stage SaaS products, I typically start at 25 with my assumption being customers typically need a few years under their belt before being able to make tooling decisions.
- Language – I’ve only marketed to english speaking audiences, so I don’t use this option.
- Location – This one is important. The US is typically the best market for SaaS. Go with Country – United States of America if you’re marketing to the US. If the US alone doesn’t give you the audience estimate you need, I’ve found that people in Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, and Australia often act similarly to those in the US. If you aren’t marketing to the US, pick your best country. Location can make a big difference with audience size, so you may need to pick every country you market to stay above a 100k audience estimate. Any location more specific than country is unlikely to grow your audience estimate much.
Devices
We’re going to skip the options in this section. I’ve never used these options in a campaign, but you may have unique needs where you need to target by operating system in the future.
Audiences
Custom audiences and lookalikes built off them can be powerful, but, to keep things simple, we’ll skip these options for this campaign and focus on using targeting features to build our audience.
Targeting
There are several types of targeting to choose from. For our simple campaign, we’re going to focus on followers and keywords because the others offer very generic targeting and are better for consumer campaigns.
Followers
Follower targeting works by putting your ad in front of the followers (or people whose profiles match the followers aka lookalikes) of specific X users you select.
So if you’re advertising a data analysis SaaS product you’d likely target popular data analysis X accounts.
You want to find the influential users on X that your audience follows the most. The larger the follower count, the better.
Keywords
Keywords targeting works by putting your ad around conversations or searches that involve one of your keywords.
While the mechanics are similar, X keyword targeting requires much more popular keywords than Google Search ads do, which means that more specific keywords won’t have enough traffic.
For example, marketing research or customer research can work for a marketing research product, but targeting keywords for a specific survey method is unlikely to work.
Targeting strategy
Optimize targeting takes the profile of your audience and looks for similar profiles outside your targeting options. We’ll keep optimize targeting off for this campaign, but you may want to try it in the future if you have trouble building a large enough audience or just want to try an experiment.
Creating ads
We’ll create 3 ads and let X’s algorithm decide which works best. If you have existing messaging, this is where you’ll use it.
For each of your three ads:
- Ad Name – Come up with an ad name (use a word or two that can describe the ad and add a 1 at the end for versioning).
- Destination – This is website because you chose website traffic as a goal.
- What’s happening – Add your copy to the What’s happening? box.
- Reply options – Stick with Everyone can reply.
- Media options – Choose single media and click add media to add your image.
- Headline – This option will appear once your image has been added.
- Website URL – This option will appear once your image has been added.
Writing ad copy
I find it’s much easier to establish a strong base of ad copy in Google Docs or Notion and then edit during the campaign creation process versus writing the whole ad in either spot.
You have 280 characters to work with, including spaces and line breaks.
The most ideal starting point for writing your first X ad is having ads on other platforms to pull copy from that you can then edit into an ad.
Other places to pull ad copy from:
- Messaging
- Positioning statement or unique value proposition
- Top product selling points
- Website copy, especially from your homepage and product page
- Customer research, especially anything around pain points and goals
- Competitor home and product pages for ideas to counter
A formula for ad copy:
- Grab attention
- With limited space, you have to grab someone’s attention in the first line
- Limit it to 1 sentence
- Include a hook, like important figures or an something related to the customer’s pain
- Try to put important nouns early in the sentence
- The details
- Detail your offering
- 1-2 sentences
- Keep it relevant to your audience
- Describe benefits in terms of your customers’ goals
- Send them to your landing page
- Close the deal
- 1 sentence
- A call to action like “sign up and get…”
X copywriting tips:
- Include line breaks to break up text for mobile users
- Use “you” and “your” to make it about the reader instead of “we” and “our”
- Use impressive numbers if you have them
- Include a quote from a customer or influencer to build trust
Ad image tips
We’re going to keep it simple and run single image ads instead of carousel or video ads. Since we’re running a web traffic campaign, the images for our ads will use website cards, which include a headline and a landing page link.
Images for your ads should have high contrast against the X user interface, be simple with text overlayed that doesn’t take up more than 25% of the image, and be relevant to the ad copy they are alongside.
Stock photos tend to be pretty obvious and will hurt your credibility, so don’t use them.
Here are X’s specific specs for images using website cards in ads:
- PNG and JPEG are recommended, while GIFs uploaded will render as a static image. X does not accept BMP or TIFF files.
- 5MB is the max image size.
- While both 1.91:1 aspect ratios and 1:1 aspect ratios are available, start with just 1:1 as that presents better on mobile.
- 800 x 800 pixels is recommended for 1:1 aspect ratios.
- The headline max character length is 70 characters, but any more than 50 characters and there’s a chance your headline will truncate on certain mobile devices.
You’ll also need to follow X’s Ads quality policy for each ad.
Review and launch your campaign
You’re very close to launching! Take a moment to review each option of your campaign and if everything looks right, hit the Launch campaign in the bottom right corner.
Once you do, your ads will be sent to X staff for review. The review process usually is done in 24 hours or less, but can take up to a couple days.
Wrapping Up
Congrats on getting your first SaaS ad campaign up on X. Let me know if you have any questions!
