Ever since Twitter became X, many users have been looking for a good alternative. Meta’s Threads has become that for a lot of people. But a very big, yet inevitable change is happening to the social media network soon: ads are coming to your feeds.

Threads ads will roll out in early 2025

Sylvia Varnham O’Regan and Kalley Huang write for The Information:

Meta Platforms plans to introduce advertisements to its text app, Threads, early next year, hoping to cash in on the app’s rapid growth, according to three people with direct knowledge of the company’s plans.

A team inside Instagram’s advertising division is leading the effort, which is still in the early stages, the people said. Threads is planning to kick off the effort by letting a small number of advertisers create and publish ads on the app starting in January, one of those people said.

On one hand, we all knew this would happen eventually. Every social media service has to some day be profitable, and ads are currently the main way that happens.

But the timing of this report is a bit unfortunate for Meta.

X has seen an increased exodus of late following Elon Musk’s heavily increased political presence. Bluesky is benefiting by adding a lot of new users, and Threads likely is too.

In any case, having Instagram’s advertising team behind the effort may be a positive. Generally, Instagram tends to offer better ads than plenty of other social media apps.

Maybe that’s due to Instagram being an image-first service, but hopefully Meta’s success with Instagram ads can lead to a decent ad product for Threads too.

How do you feel about Threads gaining ads soon? Let us know in the comments.

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