X Bans Hashtags in Promoted Posts

This seems like a slightly unnecessary move, but…

X owner Elon Musk has announced that the platform is banning hashtags from ads, in order to improve the look and responsiveness of X’s promoted posts.

As per Musk:

“Starting tomorrow, the esthetic nightmare that is hashtags will be banned from ads on X”

So it seems more driven by Musk’s personal preference than actual utility, though as some have pointed out, hashtags in promoted posts can also distract from the actual purpose of the ad, and drive viewers away from tapping on the promoted link or action.

Twitter’s previous ad team had actually been advising advertisers to dump hashtags for years, noting this exact point:

“″Hashtags link to all the other mentions of that phrase, and are useful if you’re focused on engagement. But, if your goal is have people go to your website or follow your account, you don’t want to risk someone clicking on a hashtag instead of your call-to-action.” 

So it’s not a new shift in perception, and it does make sense.

Though banning them entirely seems unnecessary, especially when a brand could, say, promote its own hashtag, or a campaign tie-in, which would contribute to the promotion’s broader performance metrics.

But Elon clearly doesn’t like them, and as with some of X’s other past changes, once he decides it doesn’t look good, he has the power to change things up.

Though he doesn’t always get his way on this front. Not entirely.

Musk’s previous big change based on “esthetics” was the move to remove all of the function buttons from X posts in-feed (reply, like and share), leaving only the total view count and time posted for each.

Users would then be able to engage by using swipe gestures, but it seems that after initial testing, and months of work on this, Musk was advised to pull back on making this the only option.

Now, you can switch to this more responsive UI if you want, but X has decided not to remove all the function buttons in-stream.

Which is a good move, because for new users, who always take a little time to adjust to X’s processes, this would only complicate matters.

But again, the decision to remove hashtags in ads, because they look better without them, is not without precedent in the Musk era.

Is it better for ads overall? I mean, probably not, but it’s also unlikely to make a heap of difference in most cases.