Meta’s X rival Threads said Friday that it is now testing ads with select brands in the U.S. and Japan. Instagram head Adam Mosseri said that the company will listen to feedback before expanding this experiment in other markets.
“We know there will be plenty of feedback about how we should approach ads, and we are making sure they feel like Threads posts you’d find relevant and interesting,” Mosseri 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,” he said.
Meta said in a blog post that the ads will show a “Sponsored” label when they appear in a feed and early tests will be image ads.
The company added that people will have controls for ad topics and they can also report ads.
“People come to Meta for a personalized experience that helps them discover businesses and content they love — ads are an essential part of enabling this. It can be as simple as finding a brand you didn’t know you loved but now follow through ads,” the company said.
Meta started Threads in 2023, initially focusing more on user growth with more than 275 million monthly active users. The company said in December that it had 100 million active users.
Just after Threads launched, Mark Zuckerberg told investors that initial focus for Threads would be on user retention. After seeing positive signs of user engagement, Meta possibly wants to start taking advantage of the growing scale of Threads with the new ads experiment.
Last April, Mosseri said in a Threads post that the company definitely planned to bring ads to the platform.
Last August, app sleuth Alessandro Paluzzi found code related to ads development for Threads, but Meta said it didn’t have any immediate plans for an ads rollout.
This story is developing…
