How to Setup X Ads - 2025 Advertising Guide

9 Essential Steps to Setup X Ads

1. Sign up for X Premium to access advertising features.
2. Set up your ad account and add payment details.
3. Install the X pixel on your website using Google Tag Manager or by adding code to your site's header.
4. Use the X Pixel Helper Chrome extension to verify proper pixel setup.
5. Create custom audiences based on website visitors, email lists, or catalog activity.
6. For Shopify users, install the X app plugin to track conversions and sync product catalogs.
7. Set up event tracking to monitor specific user actions on your site.
8. Utilize the advanced campaign creation option for more control over your ads.
9. Explore additional features like tweet scheduling and media uploads.
   

So you want to try X Twitter ads for your business but maybe don't know where to start? That's why I'm making this guide to walk you through how to set up your X ad account in 2025. I'm Brad Smith, owner of Automationlinks. I've been doing this marketing stuff for the last 10 years and helped over 2500 brands. If you want to learn a little bit more about me, you can check it out here, but this guide is straight to the point so let's go ahead and dive in.

Setting Up X Premium

The first thing you need to do on your X account is sign up for X premium.

1. Sign up for X premium (any plan works)
2. Wait 2-3 days for approval
3. Once approved, click "More" then "Ads"

Adding Payment Details and Account Approval

I've already set up a dummy account here, but the first thing it's going to ask you to do is add your card details so they can charge you.

Here are the steps:

1. Add your card details
2. Wait a few days for ad account approval
3. Once approved, you'll see the main dashboard

If you want our full blueprint on setting up all the ads, here is the X ads "blueprint" for you to download

Navigating Ads Manager and Tools

You'll be able to see some things here like campaigns, creatives and tools. I like to start on tools and always start on events manager. Once you're in the events manager, it's going to ask you to go ahead and set up your pixel. This is where you need to track visitors that come to your website or purchase from your eCommerce store or just interact with your ads.

Installing the X Pixel with Google Tag Manager

I always recommend Google tag manager. If you don't use Google tag manager, you can add the pixel code in the head section of your site. What you'll do is click on "Add events". From here you can go ahead and put your website in and choose any of these options. I like to start with a page view so we can track that. I don't like to track specific audiences that complete the event - that's going to be something completely different.

I'm going to define the event with a code and then I'm going to say that I want to be able to track all of these different variables here to make sure that I know they've given their email, their phone, or purchased something from the site. Then you can go ahead and copy this code. On our website builder we use Duda, and you can add it in the head HTML section of your site. You can really use any plug-in for this if you're using WordPress or another site.

Here are the complete steps you need to take:

1. Use Google Tag Manager (recommended)
2. If not, add pixel code to your site's head section
3. Click "Add events"
4. Enter your website
5. Choose tracking options (start with page view)
6. Define event with code
7. Select variables to track (email, phone, purchases)
8. Copy and add code to your site

Building Custom Audiences

From there I like to go create an audience. You can go ahead and create an audience here. There are a couple different ways I like to do it.

• Lists - you could take your CRM or your email list and upload them so you can do retargeting ads and show them your ads.
• Website activity - you can choose to retarget people that visit your website with a Twitter ad. You will want to make sure you have cookies allowed for certain countries and states like California.

Syncing Shopify with X Ads

If you're an e-commerce Shopify site, you're going to choose catalog activity and that will track everyone from your store. Regarding that, you'll want to go to the Shopify App Store and download the X app plugin. This will actually track all visitors, leads and purchases with the conversion value even in your X ads manager.

Creating Your First Campaign

From there, a couple more places that you can go:

• Compose tweets
• Schedule them out
• Upload posts and media

You'll also be able to use ads editor and audiences, but we actually don't use these that often. What we do is we just go and create a campaign. I always suggest to skip simple and use advance, then go from there.

Final Tips and Recommendations

I'm going to stop here because that's really all you need to get that account set up. I recommend you check out our X ads playlist where you can watch the rest of our X videos to see how to set up these ads and campaigns for best results.