Pitch deck: X leans on AI and performance in a bid to win ad dollars

By Krystal Scanlon • May 19, 2026 •

Ivy Liu

This article is part of an ongoing series for Digiday+ members to gain access to how platforms and brands are pitching advertisers. More from the series →

X is making the same pitch every other platform is making: scale plus AI equals performance.

As ever, the proof will be in the ad spend (or lack of it) given this isn’t the first time the platform has tried to reinvent itself with advertisers. Since Elon Musk’s controversial acquisition of the platform in 2022, the platform has watched major advertisers walk, rebranded from Twitter to X, hired advertising doyen Linda Yaccarino who left after two years and cycled through enough ad product relaunches to lose count.

Ad revenue has yet to recover. Still, its ad execs are nothing if not persistent. An imminent World Cup and its corresponding attention may have something to do with it.

Read on to see the pitch deck the company hopes will help it rake in ad dollars over the summer.

The first few slides focus on X selling X as a premium audience platform, noted by the audience breakdown of affluent users, higher household income, with a typical user age range between 25 and 44.

Next, is a clear attempt to show marketers how the platform has evolved beyond a social network. It has effectively moved through a series of intra-group restructurings, first being folded into xAI last year, and into SpaceX earlier this year. During that process, which really began when Musk acquired it, the platform has added more than 300 new features, a slide explained.

The deck points out new aspect ratios for content, explicitly stating that advertisers can use content posted on TikTok, Instagram or Facebook, and repurpose it over on X.

It wouldn’t be an X deck without talking about brand safety, especially given how the platform had developed a reputation for being reputationally risky since Musk’s takeover. However, as Digiday has extensively reported over the years, a lot of advertisers felt that X’s brand safety tools and levers were actually in line with other platforms in the market. So what really kept them away long-term, was the reputational risk around its owner, Elon Musk.

From there, the deck explicitly calls out X’s improved performance capabilities. Rather than focusing on engagement and cultural relevance — i.e. what X is typically known for excelling at for advertisers — the platform frames its value around business outcomes. It does this by highlighting performance improvements between August and December 2025. According to the deck, during this period, click-through rates increased 140%, conversion rates rose by 43% and advertisers saw a 37% increase in sales from advertising on the platform. However, these are still X’s own figures, and more detailed specifics weren’t shared.

All of this can be achieved through X’s overhauled ads manager, which puts xAI capabilities at the core, per the deck.

X believes it’s a full funnel platform nowadays, and uses slide 13 to explain how advertisers can tap into each stage of the funnel just using its various formats or even leaning on creators.

None of this counts if advertisers can’t measure the results. According to X, advertisers have the ability to use X’s own internal capabilities to measure their conversion and search lifts, web traffic or even any tracked KPI (if they’re willing to share their data with X). That said, third party partners such as IAS and DoubleVerify are also available for a more independent verification.

And let’s not forget X Money — the ability for payments was something Musk said he wanted to introduce shortly after his 2022 takeover, that started to take early shape from May 2023. And this deck seems to hint at actual X payment cards, in keeping with his bigger ‘everything app’ ambition.