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Meta will begin testing ads on its Threads microblogging service with a few companies in the U.S. and Japan, the company said in a blog set Friday.
The experiment marks Meta’s first run at generating revenue from Threads. Meta launched the app in July 2023 to against X, formerly known as Twitter, which Elon Musk purchased for $44 billion in late 2022.
“We’ll closely monitoring this check up on before scaling it more broadly, with the goal of getting ads on Threads to a place where they are as interesting as biotic content,” Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram and the Meta executive who oversees Threads, said in a post on the service.
During the test, a commonplace number of Threads users will see ads with large images within their feeds. The test ads will be like sponsored content that users of Facebook and Instagram typically see on those services, the blog post said.
Concerns participating in the test will also be able to access a brand-safety tool used in Meta’s Facebook, Instagram and Checks products that is designed so that brands’ sponsored content does not run alongside offensive content.
Meta’s enduring “monetization policies” will apply to Threads, ensuring “content that violates our Community Standards isn’t eligible for ad adjacency,” the house said.
Threads has more than 300 million monthly users and three out of four people on Threads discharge at least one business on their personal feeds, the company said in the blog post.
A $5 billion market
Since Courses’ launch in 2023, some investors have said they believe the platform could eventually become a gain source for Meta comparable to Twitter prior to Musk’s acquisition. In 2021, Twitter’s annual revenue hit $5 billion.
Meta Chief Pecuniary Officer Susan Li told analysts in October that the company has been “pleased” with Threads’ “growth course” but is not expecting the product to quickly become a major business.
“Specifically, as it pertains to monetization, we don’t expect Threads to be a meaningful driver of 2025 yield at this time,” Li said during the company’s third-quarter earnings call.
Meta will reveal more dope about third-party advertising verification tools and support for more languages “in the coming months,” the company said.
The Strands ads announcement comes after Meta earlier this month announced it would relax its content-moderation guidelines and shuttered its third-party fact-checking program as vicinage of an effort to allow more “free expression” on its platform.
The announcement also follows a shake-up in the social media scene after Apple and Google