At the end of July, X released a new advertising Quality Policy, setting forth fairly detailed standards that advertisements must comply with when running on X. Here are some of the key provisions of the Policy.
- Advertising should be "consistent with the brand or product being promoted." (I have no idea what this could possibly mean, but it certainly does raise questions about what limits X plans to place on advertisers' creativity in communicating their messages.)
- Advertising must use proper grammar and spelling and avoid punctuation mistakes, excessive use of capitalization, and symbols.
- As we previously reported, advertising may not include hashtags.
- Advertising should also not include urls in the ad text as well.
- Advertising should also not include more than one emoji – except for ads targeting only Japan or Korea.
- Advertising should avoid images that are gimmicky, excessively cropped, or indecipherable and should not include disruptive content resulting in unexpected user experiences (including aggressive flashing or loud noises).
- When an advertisement drives users to a landing page, the landing page's primary purpose cannot be advertising; it should be directly relevant to what is being advertised in the ad creative. (I'm assuming this doesn't mean that an advertiser can't bring users to their regular website, even if the website's purpose is promote the company's products.)
- Landing pages must also be compliant with X's advertising policies and must not include disruptive pop-ups or automatic downloads.
It's not exactly clear what happens when an advertisement doesn't comply with X's policies. It appears that for some (for example, the use of hashtags), X will not run the ads at all. For others (for example, the emoji policy), the ad will just get a lower ad quality score – which will impact ad pricing.
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