Not sure that this is a great sign for the viability of X’s subscription revenue plan.

This week, X (formerly Twitter) launched a new offer for brands that are willing to pay to get a gold checkmark in the app, with equal ad credits to be added to accounts that sign up to the program.

As you can see here, any X advertiser that signs up to the Basic Verified Organizations package, which costs $2,000 per annum, will now have $2,000 in X ad credits added to their account, which seemingly updates yearly. The same goes for the Full Access offering, at $10k per year, which will now give you $10k in ad credits as well.

So if you’re going to spend around that on X ads, you may as well sign up, and get yourself an official-looking gold checkmark to help boost your business in the app.

You’ll also, as noted above, get:

• Priority support
• Access to job listings in the app
• All the features of X Premium

Full access accounts also get a reach boost and access to Affiliations, which enables you to link to other people and profiles in the app that are connected to your business.

Seems like a pretty good deal, right? Of course, many brands are still migrating away from X, largely due to owner Elon Musk’s ongoing political commentary, which sees him amplify various conspiracy theories every other week, which he’s also admitted that he does no research on before re-sharing.

But if you’re okay with that, and your audience is still on X, then maybe it’s worth considering as part of your promotional push.

So why is X doing this?

Well, much like how it’s now giving more users their checkmarks back, and stopping them from hiding it, X seems to be of the belief that if it can get more people and brands displaying their blue and gold ticks in the app, that will then force others to follow suit, because the more checkmarks that are displayed, the more the non-checkmark accounts are both losing out on reach, while they also look more and more like bot accounts.

Which is probably not really true. Many blue checkmark accounts are clearly bot profiles, or just spammy rubbish accounts that have paid to get the marker. Which is the whole problem of selling blue ticks in the first place; As soon as Elon and Co. started selling this as a product, it immediately lost all credibility and value, as it was no longer a marker of authority and/or trust.

So really, you’re no longer paying for a checkmark, because no one cares about the blue ticks anymore, and they don’t mean anything in a representative sense. You’re really paying for the add-ons, which, given the low take up of X Premium, aren’t seemingly of much interest to most users.

But again, maybe, if you’re going to spend $2k on X ads each year, it’s worth considering.