X (Twitter) Ads Management: Conversation Targeting, Billing and Brand Safety

X (Twitter) audience in Türkiye: which conversations are biggest?

According to X's Semantic Core data, sports is the topic with the most impressions in Türkiye (Q1 2025). In GWI Core TR data, 87% of X users follow football, 67% basketball and 47% volleyball. Beyond sports, fashion, media and entertainment, beauty, finance, tourism, automotive, real estate, durable goods, technology and gaming communities also generate their own conversations. According to the same source, X users are 49% more affluent than other social media users and 12% more likely to buy a brand they've seen advertised.

So we don't stop at age and gender targeting; we build it from the conversation. For a car brand we map electric vehicle and charging conversations, for an investment app stock market and crypto discussions, using keyword, conversation topic and follower look-alike targeting. High-volume days such as derby weeks, public holidays and sale periods go on the calendar in advance through seasonal behavior analysis.

Which X ads objective should you choose? It decides what you pay for

On X, every campaign objective has its own billing event, and that choice decides what the account spends money on. We often take over accounts where a brand that wants sales is running the Engagement objective: likes and profile clicks are cheap, but almost nobody reaches the site. Before running conversion campaigns, we set up and test X Pixel events through Google Tag Manager.

• Reach: Billed per 1,000 impressions (CPM); you choose automatic bidding or target cost.
• Website traffic: Billed per click; optimization can be set to link clicks, site visits or conversions.
• Engagement: Initial impressions are free; billing starts when a user engages with the post.
• Video views: Choose a billing event of 2 seconds at 50% viewability, 3 seconds at 100% viewability, 6 seconds or 15 seconds.
• App installs: Runs on app card clicks (CPAC) or optimized action bidding (OAB).
• Conversions: Billed on impressions, with automatic bidding managing the bid.

X ads brand safety: exclusion lists before launch

X offers adjacency controls for the posts directly above and below an ad in the home timeline. Up to 2,000 keywords and 2,000 @handles can be excluded at the ad account level, and the list works across all languages. X itself states that this control is not a 100% guarantee, and we explain the situation to our clients just as openly.

We build a separate Turkish-language exclusion list for each brand: political debate terms, disaster and accident news and the sector's crisis keywords. When the news turns heated, we update the list the same day and, if needed, turn off the Profiles, Search, Replies and Media Viewer placements. Customers who say they don't want to see ads are added to the Do Not Reach List (one list per account). We don't rely on X reporting alone to read the campaign's impact on sales; we use GA4 data.

X Ads: when do we recommend it?

How we manage X Ads

1. Conversation mapWe identify the keywords, conversation topics and follower look-alike accounts in the brand's category.
2. Exclusion listsWe set up the Turkish keyword and @handle list at the account level and define placement preferences.
3. Pixel and eventsWe verify purchase, lead and add-to-cart events with X Pixel or the Conversions API.
4. Objective and billing eventWe choose the campaign objective, video billing event and bid type based on the business goal.
5. Channel shareAt the end of the first month, we compare conversions from X with other social channels in GA4 and set its budget share accordingly.

X Ads: metrics and requirements

The Brand Move X Team

To learn more about X ad formats, contact The Brand Move X team today.

Contact us now