After testing advertising in select markets, Meta Platforms is now offering ads on Instagram’s Threads globally to all eligible advertisers, providing access to the more than 320 million monthly active users the social platform has accrued since launching in July 2023. The Threads feed ad placement will be set on by default for new campaigns using either Advantage+ or Manual Placements unless an advertiser toggles to opt out. Global Threads advertisers will also have access to the platform’s inventory filter, which provides increased control over the distribution of ads.

“These ads will be delivered in select markets at launch and will roll out to additional markets as we continue to test and learn,” Meta explains in a Facebook news post.

“The expansion signals that Meta thinks that the Threads community is now robust enough to monetize and compete for advertiser dollars against its top rival, Elon Musk’s X,” reports TechCrunch. “What’s more, Meta thinks its platform is more advertiser-friendly,” claiming “three out of four Threads users already follow at least one business on the app.”

On the Q4 earnings call in January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg told investors Threads has been adding “more than 1 million signups per day,” saying he expects the fledgling service “to become the leading discussion platform and eventually reach 1 billion people over the next several years.”

CNBC says analysts have previously predicted that Threads “could potentially be a major source of revenue for Meta, akin to X,” pointing out that “Twitter’s annual sales were $5 billion in 2021.”

TechCrunch notes that “to help grow Threads, Meta has borrowed concepts from emerging social networks like Mastodon and Bluesky.” Like Mastodon, it integrates with the ActivityPub protocol, while also copying “some of Bluesky’s more popular features, including the ability to create custom feeds outside of the default algorithmic feed, and introduced its own take on Bluesky’s Starter Packs, offering curated lists of recommended users for newcomers to follow,” TechCrunch reports.

In January, it was reported that Meta was testing Threads ads in the U.S. and Japan. Bloomberg says the current expansion will cover about 30 worldwide markets.