Threads, the Meta-owned “microblogging” social media service, has begun testing ads in the US and Japan. Adam Mosseri, Head of Threads and Instagram, announced the introduction of ads on Saturday, beginning with tests among “a handful of brands” before further scaling the ad offering.
The social media giant is leaning on its existing advertiser base and ad infrastructure to essentially expand the capabilities available on Facebook and Instagram to the newer platform. Meta said that advertisers will be able to add Threads to their campaigns by simply checking a box within Meta’s Ads Manager. The ads will initially only include images, and will appear between content in the home feed, with a “sponsored” label to delineate the posts from organic content.
Users will also have control over the ads they see in the app, according to Meta, including the ability to report ads. And Meta will implement its existing brand safety tools for advertisers to choose the “sensitivity level” of the context in which their ads appear. The tech firm said it will release further information about the introduction of ad verification tools and support for more languages “in the coming months.”
“We’ll closely monitor this test before scaling it more broadly, with the goal of getting ads on Threads to a place where they are as interesting as organic content,” Mosseri said in the announcement post.
A tangled web
The announcement comes as Threads reaches 300 million monthly active users, doubling its user base since April 2024. Initially Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company would wait until the app reached one billion users before rolling out ads, but a number of factors appear to have expedited the decision.
A major factor is the ongoing decline of X under Elon Musk, which prompted the launch of Threads in July 2023. Advertisers fled Twitter in their droves, and in July 2024 Mosseri said Meta was looking to monetise the rival service “sooner rather than later.”
Meanwhile the ongoing certainty around TikTok’s future in the US could find brands looking for new social spaces in which to advertise. Last week saw a range of announcements from social media firms, including Meta-owned Instagram, beefing up their short-form video capabilities in efforts to attract TikTok users and creators. Meta will be hoping Threads can offer a similar haven for advertisers.
But the timing of the announcement in light of Meta’s recent political moves could raise concerns among some advertisers. Earlier this month the company announced it would no longer use third-party fact-checkers to moderate content on its platforms, replacing the anti-misinformation measures with the “community notes” method favoured by Elon Musk’s X.
And while Meta would argue its monetisation policies and inventory filter will ensure brand safety and suitability on Threads, marketers will likely question the direction of travel. Threads was explicity set up as a safer alternative to X (then Twitter), but its parent company now appears to be following Elon Musk’s lead around content moderation policies, which have proven disastrous for X’s brand safety standards – not to mention its ad revenues.
But on the latter point, Meta is in no such danger, with its advertising business expected to exceed the global ad revenues of all linear TV this year, according to WARC forecasts. Even if introducing ads on Threads turns out to be a risk, it is one the tech giant can afford to take.
