Do you need to pay for Premium to advertise on X?

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Part of self-publishing a book is learning how to self-promote. Over the years, I’ve done some marketing to the modest subscriber list I’ve built here but selling a product entails running traditional ads. The consensus is that it couldn’t be easier to run advertisements on the internet–it’s how all of these platforms make money. Unfortunately, I’m finding that it’s not straightforward, even when I arrive with a credit card in hand.

One of the platforms I wanted to advertise on was X, formerly known as Twitter. I was banned from Twitter over five years ago so the platform is largely unknown to me. On X, advertisements are associated with the advertiser’s account and they blend in to the feed as if they are regular tweets featuring media.

I set up my X profile. I checked the left sidebar, I clicked “More,” and I found “Ads.” Easy enough.

I clicked “Create campaign.” I entered my payment details, selected targeting, set my budget and bid, and designed the ad. The process was a bit buggy with a malfunction that prevented me from saving drafts (I was forced to start from scratch a few times). Finally, I finished. The live rendering looked great.

After all that work, I was met with the message “Your account is pending premium verification. Please check back soon after the verification process has completed.”

The annoying part is that reaching the end of the ad creation process just to be told that more money must be spent feels like a sunken cost marketing tactic. There was no warning. The error itself is opaque. Does “premium verification” mean X is waiting to verify that I purchased premium or does it mean that X is waiting for me to purchase premium and then verify my identity? If I needed a blue checkmark to advertise, it would have been nice to know at the jump.

I checked reddit. Of course, the only thread had its top comment saying “No, you don’t need premium.” That person was wrong. The few other commenters were in the same pickle as me.

It’s an annoying roadblock because the premium subscription offerings are prominently displayed during the signup process. I read the feature lists top to bottom. There was no mention of what led to advertising eligibility.

Justifying that the cost of X Premium was small compared to my overall ad budget, I upgraded. I paid. I then submitted identity verification. I can’t hate on verification. In my book, Framed: A Villain’s Perspective on Social Media, I advocated for wider verification.

I submitted everything and waited. Yes, it’s definitely a clunky, opaque process. Further, there was no email informing me of when this process completed, despite that I was a paying customer and had staged an ad. Two days later, I was verified, and I was able to submit my ad for final approval.