Why Text-Based Ad Platform Works for Newsletters

People who read love to read. People who watch videos love to watch videos. People who listen to podcasts love to listen to podcasts.

You can't change people's behaviors completely. You can only channel their existing behaviors.

This is why X Ads are a great place to run newsletter ads; X is a text-based platform, and newsletters are mostly text-based.

2 newsletters are using X ads effectively:

1. The Rundown AI

2. Milk Road

1. The Rundown AI

The Rundown AI ran X ads for 8 months, from April 21st, 2024, to December 21st, 2024. Their ads have over 225 million impressions.

In the ad world, 8 months is a long time, and 225 million impressions are massive. This sustained activity suggests the ads are working.

These ads are placed on influential accounts in Tech and AI like Balaji Srinivasan and Francois Chollet.

They likely cost between $600,000 and $1.2 million on X, based on their impressions. Similar campaigns on Facebook would cost roughly $561,000 to $2 million. This is an estimate using Gemini's Grounding Feature on AI Studio.

That's a lot of money but The Rundown AI has a strong monetization play with their course "The Rundown Univeristy" at $999 per year where 5,000+ members have already signed up. The math checks out.

2. Milk Road

I also noticed Milk Road, a crypto newsletter, using this strategy. Their ads appear within relevant tweets.

These ads don't look like traditional ads. They fit into the normal flow of the feed.

When I see a post, I check the likes, bookmarks, retweets, and comments first, in that order, before checking the sponsored Ad indicator. The ads look more like regular content, and the sponsored indicator is often grayed out.

The X Ad approach is a good opportunity for newsletters with solid budgets. If you have a clear path to newsletter monetization, X ads are a good option.

Do not forget the AI hype wave that The Rundown AI rode on. Surfing a huge wave makes many other strategies easier.

Can't expect to hit Rundown's numbers without the AI hype.

Top Tweets of the day

1/

Lesson in framing.

"If you've been looking at jets all morning, a £300000 car is an impulse buy. It's like putting sweets next to the counter" — Rory Sutherland

2/

Stop using social media unless you are intentionally using it to grow your business.

1 week of Social Media detox will show you how much your brain feels good when its not constantly hammered by dopamine.

3/

You don't hear more about "fake it till you make it" stories because many people snitch.

But its more common than you think.

Another story I heard was of an HR newsletter that faked it for a long before it turned into a real biz. Yet another one was people faking previous experiences in job applications while jumping industries to get a new job.

Rabbit Holes

1. PSA: Before & After Ads are allowed on Meta by Dara Denney

2. Meet the indie hackers killing it on TikTok by IndieHackers

3. Taste Is Eating Silicon Valley by Anu Atluru

What’d ya think of today’s newsletter? Hit ‘reply’ and let me know.

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More Startup Spells 🪄

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2. Dark Pattern in Mr.Beast's Sponsored Segments (LINK)

3. Lessons From 500k Cold DMs (Psychological Tricks) (LINK)

4. Sabrina Ramanov's Perfect SaaS Retention Strategy (LINK)