Instagram said it hasn't tested ads on Threads and has no plans to monetize it anytime soon after several developers and reverse engineers found references to advertising products in the app's code, including the word “ad” itself, as well as sponsored items and ad settings.
A JSON file that appears to have been used by the developers for testing purposes was also discovered in the public Threads mobile app.
One of the developers who made these discoveries, Alessandro Paluzzi, forced a post to show as a sponsored post and shared it on X. The post shows how the “Sponsored” label appears next to someone's Threads username.
Tech veteran Chris Messina also discovered a JSON file within the Threads app titled “bcn_single_image_ad,” which referenced a sample ad unit that was still in development.
While these findings suggest Threads engineers may be exploring advertising tech, they don't necessarily mean Threads will launch ads anytime soon, as some suspect. For example, Messina pointed to Threads' recent launch of creator insights as a first step toward launching ads, while Paluzzi would only say that Threads is “preparing to introduce ads into the app.”
However, Meta downplayed the urgency of testing ads: “We're not testing ads on Threads at this time, and we don't have any immediate plans to monetize it,” Instagram spokesperson Alec Booker told TechCrunch when asked about the developer's findings.
This echoes other comments made by Mehta, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg explaining in a message to investors last quarter that “scaling will take years.” [new products] And then we extend that beyond just the consumer experience to a very large scale business,” he said, suggesting that no advertising on Threads is planned yet.
Earlier last year, Zuckerberg also told investors that the Threads team needs to focus on user retention and improving the basics first, then grow the community to the scale it thinks it can. Only then will it start monetizing Threads. For now, the company is working on the scaling aspect, and continues to add features like cross-posting from Instagram, multiple draft support, and audience insights. Zuckerberg previously said Threads will likely hit 1 billion users in the next few years, a much bigger number than its current 200 million monthly active users.
Still, it's not surprising to see Threads working on the ad tech side of the service — it is a Meta product, after all.
As Instagram head Adam Mosseri said in April, Meta “definitely” plans to introduce ads to Threads. “We understand that people are concerned, but at the end of the day we're a business and Threads needs to make enough revenue to cover the costs of the people and servers needed to run the service and provide it to people for free,” he said in a Threads post.
Threads, which launched exactly a year ago, represents Meta's attempt to compete with Twitter (now X), which has been rebranded and reimagined under Elon Musk's ownership. After concerns about X's brand safety led to advertising boycotts and lawsuits against ad groups that distanced themselves from the platform, Threads could give advertisers and brands a new platform to promote their products and services.
Another benefit for Threads is that its marketers are already familiar with Meta's advertising tools and their performance, making it easier to adopt the new platform when Meta is ready.