Meanwhile, Meta has touted record user growth for its competing social media platform, Instagram Threads. In that time the platform has exploded in growth, and now features over 350 million monthly active users! This amazing accomplishment prominently includes their growth spurt of 30 million new users in a single quarter. This explosion shows the huge potential that exists for long-term, upward trajectory engagement on this new platform.
In fact, during Meta’s earnings call in April, CEO Mark Zuckerberg focused intently on that growth. He attributed it to progress on the app’s recommendation algorithms, which increased time spent on Threads by 35%. This jump in daily active users is a testament to how successful Meta’s recent efforts to optimize user experience have been.
In an effort to further monetize Threads and bring advertisers to the platform, Meta announced that they will start testing video ads on Threads. A small number of advertisers will experiment with video ad creatives formatted in either 19:9 or 1:1 ratios. We’ll be embedding these ads strategically amid organic conversation in the Threads feed. This is a huge leap for Threads’ ad making capabilities.
Additionally, Meta is looking to deepen its advertising offerings by working to add Trends to Instagram’s Creator Marketplace. Trends assists advertisers in identifying the topics people are most passionate about. This specialized focus is what helps them drive deeper engagement with those target audiences. Alongside this initiative, Meta will trial the Creator Marketplace API, designed to facilitate connections between businesses and quality creators at scale.
Yesterday, Threads expanded its advertising features to international advertisers. This strategic pivot demonstrates its desire to deepen its moat against competition and protection from growing headwinds in the social media arena. Now with video ads being implemented, Threads has become quite the opposite, similar to its competitor, X. This change is intended to help them take a bigger bite out of the advertising market.
As these changes make their way through the platform, we’ll have to wait and see if they can improve user engagement and advertiser interest in Threads. The platform’s growth trajectory and cutting-edge advertising features make it one of the most important social media platforms.