Reports indicate that Meta Platforms is preparing to introduce advertising to Threads, perhaps as soon as January. Threads is the year-old social platform it launched to compete with Twitter in July 2023, the same month Elon Musk was rebranding that platform as X. Meta is looking to begin Threads’ transition to ad support by initially allowing only a small group of advertisers to create and publish ads before opening the platform to the ad industry at large later in the year. Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri, who also runs Threads, has said Meta is “definitely” planning to open ad inventory on Threads.

“We don’t know how ads will surface on Threads just yet, but they could appear as ‘sponsored’ posts, which is something reverse engineer Alessandro Paluzzi recently spotted in development,” The Verge writes.

After a report about imminent Threads ads surfaced in The Information, a Meta Platforms spokesman told The Verge that “since our priority is to build consumer value first and foremost, there are no ads or monetization features currently on Threads,” but declined to comment on future plans.

However, as recently as July, Mossieri said “at the end of the day we’re a business and Threads needs to make enough money to pay for the people and servers that it takes to run the service and provide it to people for free.”

In its Q3 earnings report, Meta reported $39.8 billion in ad revenue for the first nine months of 2024, which The Verge says translates to “97 percent of its overall revenue.” On the Q2 earnings call, Meta Platforms CFO Susan Li said that the company does not anticipate Threads becoming a “meaningful driver” of revenue in the coming year.

The Verge says Threads may appeal to advertisers as “a safer alternative to X,” but cites a report in Financial Times this week that indicates “some advertisers are planning to head back to X to earn favor with Elon Musk and President-Elect Donald Trump.”

Meta initially said “Threads ads wouldn’t be coming till it reaches a billion users, but it has already been experimenting with Threads ads formats, with a view to one day adding Threads placement into its ad options,” Social Media Today writes, noting that the text-based Threads, built around real-time conversation, currently has 275 million active users and “maybe Meta’s getting impatient.”