Yes, Meta has said it will wait to advertise Threads until the app is “on a clear path to a billion users,” and no, nothing has been officially announced yet.
But it seems that Meta is laying the groundwork for monetizing threads, with a new example of how sponsored posts will look like in its Twitter-like app.
As you can see in this example posted by App Researcher Alessandro PaluzziSponsored thread posts, when eventually published, will include a “Sponsored” marker next to the username to indicate that it is an advertisement.
The posts will then be delivered to relevant users in the stream, with threads added to your placement options in Meta Ads Manager. But to be clear, they won’t necessarily be published in the near future.
According to Meta (via TechCrunch), the Threads team is researching the back-end processes that will ultimately power Threads advertising, There is currently no live testing of ads on threads.
Meta also said there is “no immediate timeline for monetization,” so even if elements are added to the backend code, that doesn’t mean Threads advertising is imminent.
Still.
Finally, of course Threads will get ads, but given the prominence of ads in other social media apps, I don’t expect this to have a major impact on usage. Sure, you’ll see a few sponsored posts in your feed, but you’ll just scroll past most of them like you do in other apps, and Threads’ usage and growth momentum will continue as normal.
This could also be the reason why Threads is moving to ads sooner than expected. I mean, if there is an opportunity to make more money and serve ad partners, then Meta might as well go ahead and with 200 million users and growing, Threads does indeed offer valuable opportunities.
Maybe Meta will try running Threads ads before the holidays to generate additional revenue. Or maybe this is just a very early test and Meta will wait until Threads hits, say, 500 million users before moving forward.
At the current growth trajectory, this could take several years. However, there is also a complicating factor: the more communities move over from X, the stronger the overall momentum behind threads will become.
So, yes, Meta is exploring ads on threads, and this is what they will probably look like. But whether they will be available in weeks, months, or years, we don’t know yet.
However, I doubt Meta can last another year before bringing in the ads.
