Premium Home Timeline needs 50 percent of the post visible
X qualified impressions require 50% visibility. A video that autoplays off-screen may not pay.
A video that autoplays below the fold is not a qualified impression. X's Original Content Rewards pays on qualified impressions: unique impressions from Premium users on the Home Timeline, where at least 50 percent of the post is visible. Off-screen playback, a sliver of a player, a boosted placement, a reply — none of those are that unit.
The hook has to land in-frame on a timeline, not only in a For You-style full-screen feed. If the first thing a Premium user sees is a paragraph, a link card, or a thread so tall the video never reaches 50 percent of the viewport, you did not earn the impression you thought you earned.
How the pay unit is defined — Premium, Home Timeline, unique, no promoted — is X pays Premium Home Timeline impressions. This page is the 50 percent rule inside that definition.
What "50 percent of the post visible" is doing
It is a viewability gate. Advertising markets have used a similar idea for years: at least half the unit on screen, or it does not count. X applied it to creator payouts. The object is the post, not the video file alone. A post is text plus media plus layout. If the composed card is mostly off-screen, the impression is not qualified even if the encoder started the file.
Two failure modes follow.
The video is in the post but not in the viewport. Autoplay can fire with a few pixels on screen. That is a play, not 50 percent visible. A user scrolling past a tall thread may trip a playhead and never see the frame you spent credits on.
The post is taller than the rule. A 400-word essay with a video at the bottom is a post whose visible half, on a phone Home Timeline, is still text. The clip can sit under the fold for the entire dwell. Write less above the media, or put the media where the first viewport is.
For You and Explore are not this surface. Full-screen vertical feeds hide the viewability problem because the unit is the screen. Home Timeline is a stream of cards. Cards can be half off the screen. Design for a card.
What to put in the first viewport
Treat the Home Timeline card as the product.
The frame has to read at a glance. A talking head mid-blink, a dark plate, a pack shot with no label — those are feed-native problems too, but on a timeline they compete with text posts. The first visible frame is the hook. Prompting for a still-strong open is the generation habit; cropping so that frame fills the card is the layout habit.
Text above the video stays short. One or two lines that name the claim. The video is not a footnote to a newsletter. If the argument needs a thread, put the clip in the first post of the thread, not in post four.
Do not lead with a link. Link cards and quoted tweets add height and steal the visible half. If the clip is the asset you want counted, it has to be the thing on screen.
Square and landscape behave differently than 9:16 in a timeline card. Vertical video in a Home Timeline is a tall object; it can help you reach 50 percent if the card is mostly the player, or hurt you if the player plus your caption plus a quoted post exceeds the viewport. Preview the post on a phone before you treat the upload as done.
What this does not pay
Non-Premium views do not move the cheque. Promoted impressions are out. Repeat impressions from the same account on the same post are out. Replies are out of the eligibility window and are the wrong shape for this viewability rule anyway — a reply is nested, often truncated, and is not how you design a 50 percent-visible card.
A "views" counter that includes all of those is a vanity number. Qualified is unique, Premium, Home Timeline, half visible. Build the post so a Premium user scrolling their Home can actually see it.
A production check
Before you post a clip you hope to be paid on:
- Open a draft as it will appear on a phone Home Timeline, not in the composer preview at full bleed.
- Ask whether 50 percent of this post is on screen without a scroll.
- If not, cut copy, move the media up, kill the quoted tweet, or split the thread so the clip is post one.
- Confirm the first frame reads when the player is only half the card.
If you cannot clear that check, you do not have a Rewards post yet. You have a video file. Put it in a shorter card.
FAQ
Does autoplay count as a qualified impression?
Not by itself. Autoplay can start when only a strip of the player is on screen. Qualified needs at least 50 percent of the post visible, from a Premium user, on the Home Timeline. A playhead moving off-screen is not that.
Is this the same as YouTube's first-frame view?
No. YouTube's public view counter is a different product on a different platform. X is paying a viewability-gated Home Timeline impression from Premium accounts. Do not import YouTube hook advice as if it were this 50 percent rule. The shared idea is only that the frame has to be on screen.
Should I avoid vertical video on X?
No. Avoid vertical video plus a novel of text plus a quote tweet in one card. Vertical can fill a timeline card. The test is whether half the post is visible without a scroll, not whether the file is 9:16.
Do impressions on the video player specifically have to be 50 percent?
X's published unit is 50 percent of the post visible. Design the whole card — copy, media, attachments — so that threshold is meetable in a Home Timeline viewport. Do not hide the clip under a fold of text and argue that the player would have been 50 percent visible if anyone had scrolled.