X is bringing back one of Twitter’s old direct-response ad formats, and the timing says a lot about where the platform wants its ad business to go.
The revived format is Lead Gen Ads, a promoted post unit built around a prominent call-to-action bar at the bottom of the ad. Social Media Today reports that X has updated parts of the format while keeping the original idea intact: capture a lead directly from the feed, without sending the user to an external landing page first.
Tap. Lead. Done.
Introducing Lead Gen Ads — instant, frictionless leads right where conversations happen. Reach out to your X Sales Rep for exclusive access today. pic.twitter.com/yxiWwNzAGn
— Business (@XBusiness) August 25, 2026
It is not exactly a new idea. Twitter retired a similar lead generation format in 2016. X is now bringing back the basic structure with a more modern presentation and a clearer pitch to advertisers who want fewer clicks between attention and action.
What X Is Bringing Back
The updated Lead Gen Ads place a colored CTA along the bottom of a promoted post. According to the report, the color of that bar is dictated by the dominant color in the ad’s main image or video, giving the unit a more integrated but still visible action point in the feed.
When a user taps the ad, a native form opens inside X. The promise is simple: no redirect, no separate landing page, no forcing people to retype information somewhere else. X says that after a user completes their first lead gen submission, later forms can be pre-populated to reduce the drop-off that usually happens when people are pushed outside an app or asked to fill in the same fields again.
X is positioning the format for classic performance use cases: booking demos and appointments, growing email lists and waitlists, collecting quote requests, and running sweepstakes entries. The format reportedly supports image, video, and carousel promotions, as well as Timeline Takeover ads, and is now available in X Ads Manager.
The Real Signal Is Friction
The interesting part is not that X has rediscovered an old Twitter ad product. It is that the platform is trying to make the feed work harder as a conversion surface.
Lead generation has always had a friction problem on social platforms. Users may notice the ad, understand the offer, even intend to act. But every extra step after that creates leakage. A browser opens. A landing page loads slowly. A form asks for information the platform already knows. The moment gets lost.
X’s revived Lead Gen Ads are designed to keep that moment inside the app. That fits a broader platform pattern: social products are increasingly trying to compress workflows into native, one-tap actions, whether that means capturing a sales lead in-feed or, as with Instagram’s First Draft turning raw clips into a Reel in one tap, removing steps that used to sit between intent and output.
For advertisers, this gives X a more familiar performance story at a time when brand safety, audience trust, and budget scrutiny still matter. The format itself is old. The strategic need behind it is not. X needs more ad products that can prove action, not just attention.
If the revived format works, the win is not nostalgia for Twitter-era ad units. It is X making the case that its feed can still capture demand before users have a reason to leave.