The party’s over: ads invade Threads as well

It was only a matter of time, a certainty that lingered in the air since launch day, but that many users hoped would be postponed for as long as possible.

That moment, however, has arrived: the pristine era of Threads, the microblogging social network born as an offshoot of Instagram, is coming to an end.

Meta has officially announced the extension of advertising placements on the platform globally.

Threads: Meta announces global advertising rollout

Starting next week, the clean feed free of commercial interruptions to which millions of people had grown accustomed will begin to change, signaling the app’s entry into its full economic maturity phase.

Although the Menlo Park company has specified that the implementation will be gradual and may take several months to be completed on every single account, the signal is unequivocal: the honeymoon without ads is over.

The decision to turn on the monetization taps isn’t random, but follows a growth trajectory that has few precedents in the recent history of social media.

Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, has praised Threads several times, calling it the new big success of the company, and the numbers seem to back him up.

The platform has now surpassed the critical threshold of 400 million monthly active users, a user base too large to be ignored by advertisers. The upward trajectory has been dizzying: after debut in July 2023, the app reached 200 million users by mid-2024, rising to 320 million in January 2025 and adding tens of millions of new sign-ups in recent months.

The stated goal by Zuckerberg to investors is ambitious but increasingly realistic: to reach one billion users within a few years.

With a user base of this size, the introduction of advertising becomes not just a possibility, but a structural necessity to sustain costs and generate profits.

Integration into the Meta ecosystem

For advertisers, coming to Threads won’t require learning new, complex tools. Meta’s strength lies in its integrated infrastructure.

The company has made extremely easy for brands to expand their existing campaigns to include Threads, enabling automatic ad placements through the Advantage+ program and via manual campaigns.

Supported formats will be familiar to anyone already using Facebook or Instagram: static images, videos, the new 4:5 aspect ratio formats, and carousels, ideal for telling more elaborate visual stories.

Management will occur directly from centralized business settings, enabling cross-posting between Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and, now, Threads.

This synergy allows Meta to offer a vast advertising space without forcing companies to fragment their creative resources.

Brand safety and the challenge to rivals

A crucial aspect Meta is pushing hard on is security, a theme that clearly differentiates Threads from its direct rival X (formerly Twitter).

In tandem with the global rollout of ads, Meta has extended to the Threads feed the third-party verification, already available on the group’s other platforms through Meta Business Partners.

This tool offers advertisers an independent guarantee of brand safety, ensuring their ads do not appear next to inappropriate or harmful content.

This is a smart strategic move, especially at a time when other platforms are grappling with the proliferation of illegal deepfakes and controversial content that worry major brands.

By offering a more controlled and secure environment, Threads positions itself as the ideal safe haven for advertising investments seeking visibility without reputational risks.

Despite the inevitable annoyance for the end user, Meta has reassured that ad frequency will remain initially “low” as the functionality is scaled globally, in an effort not to traumatize a community accustomed, until yesterday, to a purely conversational experience.