X creates a new revenue model for creators — but will it actually win them over?

But X’s program faces a challenge in winning over creators. The platform’s feed can be controversial, which media buyers and creator agents say diminishes its creator and advertising value compared to others.

Digiday spoke with a media buyer, two management agency execs, and two online media execs, most of whom said that X hasn’t been top of mind.

“The goal is to reward the creators that bring new ideas and new content, and focus on quality over quantity,” said Allegra Jacchia, creator product lead at SpaceXAI (xAI was absorbed into aerospace manufacturer SpaceX in 2026 to make SpaceXAI, which also operates in AI development and social media).

The model is a change from the current revenue share program (that launched in July 2023) where any X user with a premium subscription, 5 million organic impressions accumulated over three months, and at least 500 verified followers could earn money on the platform — even if they’re regurgitating someone else’s content, aggregating news, or purposefully ruffling feathers (otherwise known as farming engagement or ragebaiting).

The new monetization program kicks off on Sept. 8, a few months after X announced Creator Connect, an AI-powered tool that connects brands to creators based on their campaign objectives. 

“We need to make sure they can make a living on the platform,” said Monique Pinatrelli, head of global advertising at SpaceXAI.

Pintarelli said (without providing specific figures) that sports, technology, business, finance and gaming are top categories on the platform for content creators. “Now we’re creating the tools for those experts to make a better living and brands to find them easier.”

Notably, X renewed its long-standing partnership with the NFL in 2024, launching a dedicated NFL Portal on the platform.

Doug Landers, co-founder of management agency Greenlight Group, said that while X has not historically been a good payout platform, it is a great fandom organizer.

“There’s nothing else like it,” he said. “Look at any artist, athlete or creator with a real fandom and you will find the same thing on X: Fans who translate, archive, organize and campaign entirely as a labor of love, at a scale essentially no marketing budget can buy.”

Not all media buyers and influencer marketers are won over. Mat Micheli, co-founder and CEO of influencer marketing platform Viral Nation, said his creators haven’t talked about X in “multiple years.” Karissa Tuccio, executive director of social and influence at Mediassociates, doesn’t typically recommend X for clients, which are mainly in the finance and tech sectors.

“The risk was not worth the reward,” said Matt Grandchamp, svp and head of revenue at NowThis Media, about creators posting and brands advertising on X. NowThis Media does not currently link to an X account on its website. 

Grandchamp did say, however, that media companies will likely start posting regular content on X again, as adding one more platform into the mix doesn’t overload their workflow. “It’s an additional revenue stream, it’s passive, it’s low lift, so we’ll turn it on,” he said. Then there could be a trickle down effect, where vertical shows start uploading content there and creators on those shows could join the platform if they see that content performing well.

Many believe the aforementioned risk came after Elon Musk bought X, then Twitter, in 2022. Within months, the blue check verification system — once a mark of legitimacy for creators, journalists, and celebrities — was extended to anyone with an active subscription to X Premium. The Trust and Safety Council was dissolved in 2022, and by 2024, nearly 80% of engineers working on trust and safety had been laid off, according to Forbes. 

Mustafa Aijaz, vp of media company SoaR, said he’s found advertisers are more reserved when it comes to X because they don’t know what their ad might sit next to on the timeline.

Pintarelli told Digiday the platform takes safety very seriously, and has done “tremendous amounts of work around brand safety.” 

X’s ad revenue has yet to return to pre-Musk-acquisition heights — though it just had what appears to be its first YoY recovery since 2021, according to revenue numbers shared by Business Insider. Pintarelli said earlier this year that almost all of the advertisers that left around 2024 have since returned. 

A content shift

“X is trying to legitimize itself here and actually compete for quality creators instead of the copycat and slop accounts,” said Aijaz. 

Quality creators can (and do) earn plenty on X. Though it’s one of the few platforms that requires a subscription for monetization, it also offers creators a chance to sell subs to their audience, and X doesn’t take any cut of the revenue from those subscriptions. Jacchia told Digiday there are some creators earning millions of dollars a month through X’s creator subscriptions program, though she didn’t name names.

“You’re going to hear a crazy person talking about something over there, and a person talking about the future of AI over there, and you’re going to get a little bit of everything,” said Pintarelli. “That’s not going to change. But what is important is this idea of control and transparency.”

X wouldn’t confirm what kind of content it’s looking to disincentivize with this new program, but it does regularly play whack a mole with bot accounts, purging more than 40,000 just last month.

The platform also seems to have a propensity toward rage bait: A study recently published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that its algorithm was optimized for engagement, with a negative correlation between certain X users’ values (namely, Democrats) and the content the algorithm showed them. 

Musk himself often engages with accounts accused of trafficking in rage bait and misinformation. On August 20 he replied “true” to a post from the 1.1 million follower verified account The Rabbit Hole. The post read, “George Floyd’s death was used as an excuse for over 500 riots and to spread a false narrative of police-on-black brutality.”

Then there are the lawsuits centered around SpaceXAI’s generative AI program, Grok, and the sexually explicit content allegedly created with it and disseminated on the platform. Some of that content was based on pictures of minors. SpaceXAI is suing a man accused of using Grok to generate sexually explicit content featuring minors; a family is suing the platform for the content that man allegedly made.

Shifting X’s content reputation will take time, if it’s at all possible. 

“I wouldn’t expect agencies to move budget immediately on the back of this,” said SoaR’s Aijaz. “But if the feed actually looks different in the next quarter or two, it would definitely make a stronger case.”

“I don’t think that unique creator content is going to change the entire dynamic of what the platform is enough,” said Mediassociates’ Tuccio.