The Ultimate Guide to X (Formerly Twitter) Ad Targeting

X is among the world’s most popular social media platforms, with more than 561 million active monthly users. If we look at 2025 statistics, 132 million people use the platform daily, with 76.18% of users being between 18 and 44. If you’re reading this, the question that is probably going through your mind is “How do I reach these people?” Well, look no further!

X Business can help get your brand in front of your target audience through their many ad targeting options. In this blog post, we’ll delve into the nitty-gritty of X ad targeting and teach you how to make the most of the various options the platform has to offer.

Follower Targeting

Follower targeting is an option that lets you target the followers of other accounts that are relevant to your business. These users are likely to share interests relating to your business as they follow brands similar to yours. To get the most out of this, you need to analyze your competitors, influencers in your niche, industry news accounts, and so on. Once you elect to target the followers of an account similar to yours, X will automatically create an audience based on those followers’ interests.

Best practices

• Utilize https://x.com/explore to find influencers in your niche worth targeting.
• Don’t just target random accounts with millions of followers. Target the accounts of brands that are the most similar to yours.
• Start off small with around 30 usernames per campaign, making sure the potential reach is at least 50K followers.

Gender Targeting

Twitter takes the gender information that users share in their profiles and uses it to infer the gender of other account owners who haven’t disclosed theirs, based on similarities between accounts. According to X, their public signals for gender targeting are 90% accurate. With X business, you have the option of targeting men, women, or any gender, as well as specifying the age range.

Best practices

• Age and gender targeting are not typically used as standalone targets. They are best combined with other targeting options such as location, interests, or devices.
• Researching your audience really comes in handy here. If you’re not sure whether men or women are the target audience for your product, run separate campaigns for each gender, then compare the results.

Twitter Ads Age Targeting

Age targeting lets you reach people in specific age ranges. These ranges (‘buckets’) are based on the birthdates that users have entered in their profiles. For accounts that haven’t disclosed their birthday, Twitter estimates their age using signals such as the accounts they follow and their interests. Most age buckets are available worldwide, while a few are limited only to Japan.

The age ranges available for global targeting are the following:

Twitter Ads Location Targeting

Location targeting helps get advertisers’ campaigns in front of people in specific places—such as countries, regions, cities, postal codes, or even within a set radius of a location. Ads are delivered based on recent location signals like IP address and GPS data. X also has a radius targeting option (1-50 miles), but currently, it is only available in the US and Japan.

What if the location you’re trying to target isn’t available?

If the exact location you want to target isn’t available, choose the region or area nearest to it instead. Bear in mind, there are still countries that don’t yet support detailed targeting options like metro, postal code, or region.

What if you’re seeing impressions served outside your geo-location targeting?

If you see impressions outside your geo targeting, it’s probably a good idea to check your campaign history. Adding location targeting after launch has been known to cause impressions to be served globally at first. You may also notice that your spend by location doesn’t add up perfectly; this is usually due to X’s 1–3% attribution loss in reporting.

Best practices

• Make your ads relevant to the area you’re targeting by using location-specific language.
• Include location and call extensions in your ads to improve their relevance.
• Exclude irrelevant locations that are performing poorly.

Language Targeting

Language targeting allows you to reach people based on the languages they speak. X determines a user’s language based on their profile settings and activity on the platform. If a person knows multiple languages, they can be reached through any of them.

X currently offers 46 different languages to choose from:

Best practices

• This targeting method works especially well during global events or holidays.
• Conduct multilingual keyword research for the best results.
• Create landing pages that use the same language as the ads you’re running.

Interest Targeting

Interest targeting allows you to reach an audience based on their hobbies, passions, and online behavior. X gives you the option to choose from 25 main categories and over 350 sub-topics. These are identified through signals such as who a user follows and what they post, share, or engage with.

In order to get the best of this feature, choose interests that closely match your campaign’s message and try to target no more than 10 sub-topics. Once your campaign is live, monitor its performance and make adjustments based on which interests drive the strongest results.

Behavior Targeting

Behavior targeting (currently available only in the U.S. and UK) allows you to reach audiences based on their lifestyle choices and shopping habits tracked outside of Twitter. X collects this data from partner networks, making it easy for you to get your ad in front of users who show specific buying patterns.

Best practices

• Hone in on the buyer traits that coincide with your brand and product. Really specific buyer traits will have a more expensive cost-per-click or cost-per-conversion.
• Run a test with more basic traits first, then analyze the campaign’s performance.
• Exclude behaviors that don’t fit your goals.

Twitter Ads Keyword Targeting

Twitter’s keyword ad targeting allows you to reach users on the platform based on the keywords in their search queries, posts, recent posts, and posts they’ve engaged with. If done right, this X/Twitter ad targeting option puts you smack dab in front of your dream target audience.

Best practices

• Conduct in-depth keyword research. Make a list of keywords that reel in clicks to your website.
• Review the analytics from your campaigns after a week and analyze what’s working and what isn’t.
• Twitter is a platform that’s all about timing—so run your keyword targeting campaigns when your brand is most relevant.

Emoji Targeting

Emoji targeting allows you to reach people based on their emoji use, whether that be in their own Tweets or those they engage with. By treating emojis as signals of mood, interest, or sentiment, brands can connect with users in unique ways. For example, emoji targeting can be used to reach people who use food emojis, express certain emotions, or show passions through emoji use.

Best practices

• Use emojis that can be in some ways relevant to your brand (i.e., using the beer emoji if you run a brewery).
• Different demographics use emojis differently. Bear that in mind when running an emoji targeting campaign.

Device Targeting

On X, device targeting gives you the ability to target users based on:

• Type of device
• Operating system
• Mobile carrier
• Wi-fi connectivity
• New device

Best practices

• If you want to target both iOS and Android users, but for different apps or updates, you can devise separate campaigns for each type of device. This way, you can adjust bids independently and optimize for efficiency.
• If you plan to use device targeting, make sure your website/landing page is optimized for mobile.
• People with new devices are the most likely group to be interested in new apps or services for their devices.

Trend Targeting with Twitter (X) Ads

Trend Takeover is designed to maximize visibility and engagement for your brand by placing your ad at the very top of the Trending Topics list in the Explore tab. The runtime for these ads is 24 hours. This ad solution allows your brand to dominate trending topics and capture the attention of users when they are most engaged, browsing through the explore tab.

Best practices

• Great for products or services that align with current trending topics.
• Use trend takeover to strengthen your brand’s presence by associating your ads with trending topics and themes.
• Capitalize on holidays by running special offers or campaigns aligned with this year’s seasonal trends.

Final Thoughts

Twitter/X ad targeting is extremely precise and flexible. Its myriad of options lets you fine-tune your audiences for stronger performance by segmenting and testing data. For example, you can combine a tailored audience with interest or behavioral targeting to connect with the right users at the right time.

Regardless of your objective, always track which campaigns resonate with your audience and which do not. Start each new campaign with the essentials—location, gender, language, and device—and build the rest from there by choosing a main category such as an interest, behaviour, follower, or keyword.

Strive for balance; don’t go too broad, nor too narrow. The goal is to reach as many qualified users within your ideal demographic as possible.