Meta announced Friday that it's beginning to test ads on Threads. This marks the company's first attempt to generate revenue from its X/Twitter competitor since launching the platform in 2023.
The initial test will roll out to a small group of users in the US and Japan, where ads will appear as image posts within users' feeds. Advertisers can extend their existing Meta campaigns to Threads by simply checking a box, Meta's blog post said.
"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," Adam Mosseri, who heads Instagram and Threads, posted on the platform.
Threads is now used by 300 million active users each month, according to Meta, and three out of four Threads users follow at least one business account, the company said.
The timing of the ad rollout appears strategic, as the social media landscape is experiencing upheaval. Meta's push into Threads advertising follows recent turmoil at TikTok, which faces potential restrictions in the US, and continued advertiser wariness around X under Elon Musk's ownership.
Meta executives have spent recent weeks reassuring advertisers about the company's decision to relax content-moderation policies and end its third-party fact-checking program.
At the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Meta's head of global business, Nicola Mendelsohn, told Business Insider that the company's brand safety commitments would remain unchanged despite the shift toward what CEO Mark Zuckerberg called a return to "free expression."
"As with most things Meta does in the marketplace, timing is everything," Ted Harrison, the former head of production at Twitter and X and the founder of Neuemotion, told BI.
"Meta may have investments in a plethora of other areas, but this move at the moment is a clear capitalization for their core business on the signals audiences and advertisers are sending on wanting to find a home off of X," he said.
Meta said that it's implementing brand safety measures to attract advertisers who may be hesitant about platform content. One of the company's brand safety measures includes AI-powered tools that let advertisers control what content their ads appear next to. Meta said it will expand third-party advertising verification tools and language support in the coming months as it gradually scales up the advertising program based on initial test results.
"One of the greatest benefits that Meta has over any stand-alone platform with similar content and ad units is that advertisers can programmatically place their ads across Meta's entire ecosystem based on real-time efficiency," Jack Johnston, the senior social innovation director at Tinuiti, a digital marketing firm, told BI. "When Meta first rolled out Reels, that is how most advertisers purchased inventory so they could ease into the placement."
However, Meta executives have tempered revenue expectations in the past.
During the company's third-quarter 2024 earnings call, Susan Li, its chief financial officer, told analysts that while the company was "pleased" with Threads' growth, it didn't "expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 revenue."
Baruch Labunski, the founder and CEO of the digital marketing agency Rank Secure, told BI that "making great ads" would be a key differentiator for Threads from X.
"The user base on Threads has grown considerably, partially from those fleeing X after the Musk takeover," Labunski said. "It must focus on making great ads to compete."
Do you work at Meta? Contact this reporter from a nonwork email and device at pdixit@insider.com or pranavdixit@protonmail.com. You can also reach him securely via Signal at +1408-905-9124. Your identity will be protected.
