X is experimenting with a fresh kind of advertising that’s designed to feel less like a traditional ad and more like a helpful recommendation. In a limited test currently spotted by at least one user in Europe, X inserted a prompt directly beneath a post that mentions a company or its products. In the first example making the rounds, a user praised Starlink’s satellite internet for working well in Portugal, and right under that post appeared a recommendation that said “Get Starlink.” Clicking it took users to Starlink’s website.
X’s head of product, Nikita Bier, publicly confirmed the experiment and summed up the goal with a simple line: the team is “trying to make an ad product that isn’t an ad.”
Right now, the Starlink recommendation itself isn’t showing up for everyone. What many users can see, however, is the space where the new format would appear. When viewing a post like @levelsio’s March 6 entry about Starlink, there’s an outlined box beneath the post text. In markets where the test isn’t live, that box may display a random post instead. Where the test is active, the box can turn into a targeted recommendation tied to the brand mentioned in the original post.
Not surprisingly, people noticed. In replies to the Starlink example, commenters called out the new button-style insert, with one jokingly asking whether the Starlink button had been added.
One of the most interesting details is what X doesn’t want this ad slot to become. When someone suggested allowing affiliate links in the same area, Bier pushed back, saying that would encourage people to mislead others. His stance was that recommendations on the platform should be trustworthy rather than financially driven by users trying to earn a commission.
This new ad experiment arrives as X is also taking bigger steps toward creator-focused monetization and clearer sponsorship tools. The company is rolling out “Paid Partnership” labels, which creators can apply to posts to meet advertising disclosure rules without relying on hashtags like “ad” or “paid partnership.” If those labeled sponsored posts were eventually paired with a built-in advertiser link format like the one being tested, X could make the platform more attractive to brands and agencies looking for cleaner, more direct ways to run campaigns.
That matters because X has spent years trying to become a stronger home for creators. The platform has introduced multiple creator programs and revenue features over time, including pay opportunities for high-performing posts, ad revenue sharing, and creator subscriptions. This week, X also refreshed Creator Subscriptions with additional capabilities, including the option to monetize individual threads.
And there’s another creator-related update in the mix: X says its integrated chatbot, Grok, can now read the platform’s long-form “Articles.” While long-form posts haven’t become as widely used as short updates, improving discovery and utility around longer content could be part of X’s broader push to keep creators publishing directly on the platform instead of sending audiences to personal websites or newsletters.
Taken together, these changes point to the same goal: make X a more compelling place for creators and advertisers by blending monetization, disclosure, and promotion into the posting experience itself. Whether users accept brand “recommendations” tucked under everyday posts—and whether that format can truly feel like something other than an ad—will likely determine how far this experiment goes.
