Meta’s Twitter challenger Threads promises similar scale, efficiency and sales performance with advertising as its stablemates Facebook and Instagram.
While it will be months before advertising gates are open, brands can position themselves now to take advantage of the new social media platform.
Influencers have already rushed the new platform to take ground early, establish a lead and build followers.
"As paid advertising isn’t an option, for now, the most that brands can do is to set up their threads account and, if appropriate, let their brand personality come through," says Mike Proulx, VP and research director at Forrester.
“But not every brand should engage on Threads right now. Some should just monitor the vibe while they take a ‘wait and see’ approach.”
Threads has a long road ahead to scale and retain an audience, integrate new features and eventually bring in the advertising dollars.
Kelsey Chickering, principal analyst at Forrester, says the easiest part for Meta will be monetising Threads because if there’s one thing the company excels at, it’s advertising.
“Meta commands the lion’s share of social media budgets because it works,” she says.
“The company’s core family of apps, including Facebook and Instagram, has the most mature offering across the social media advertising maturity spectrum.”
Kieron Leopard, executive creative director at IPG’s Huge, says still there is much to learn about what’s possible with Threads.
However, in the short term, brands can take advantage of the creative and visual potential that Instagram users are known to love.
“Similarly, brands can also make leaps in their reach by leveraging Instagram’s built-in audience and seamless integration with Meta single sign-on,” says Leopard.
“Experiment with this organically, be prepared to do things that don’t work but remember to learn from the experiments.
“It will be interesting to see how audiences react to brands on the platform as much as brands reacting to the introduction of Threads.”
Delaying the introduction of advertising makes sense from a Meta perspective.
“This allows them time and space to learn about user behaviour before they want to monetise that behaviour,” says Leopard.
“It served them well with Facebook and Instagram, makes sense here. It also means that if/when they do flip it to being a useful media channel, they will have enough learnings to maximise their sales strategy to brands.”
Sign ups reached 100 million by the end of the first weekend.
However, data from Sensor Tower data and SimilarWeb shows average daily users have fallen.“This could drive testing between platforms. For example, one day, they may want to do a comparison between Twitter and Threads on a similar campaign to understand which platform provides them with their desired outcomes.
“It’s safe to say that Meta will move fast when they need to. Some options could be here sooner that we all think.
“In the future, the opportunities for brands with strong Instagram communities and previous (and ongoing) ‘test and learn’ approaches will have data to drive meaningful adjustments to their media spend.
“Twitter still has a lot to offer as its loyal community and the creators that drive the content on the platform haven’t found reason to leave, despite dwindling users. Additionally, many users initially looked at Threads as an opportunity to rid themselves of the rampant toxicity found on Twitter.
“That value proposition is being questioned with some rise of hate speech on the Threads platform. There is probably a bigger anti-social media trend happening that is not only affecting Twitter, but all platforms. Ultra connectedness, attention theft, poor moderation, algorithmic echo chambers, these are all problems being discussed in communities.”
Analysts at Morningstar don't expect all advertisers that leave or reduce spending on Twitter to go to Threads.
Other apps including TikTok, Pinterest, and Snapchat represent additional options.
"However, many could prefer Threads, given its similarity to Twitter," the analysts say.
"To increase its chances of maintaining and growing its user count, we think Meta’s Threads should focus mainly on attracting content—bring in as many widely followed Twitter accounts as possible, many of which already do have Threads accounts."
"If Meta can continue to attract content creators to Threads and retain the current users on Threads, while monetizing the app through the current advertising model, Threads could add another $2 billion-$3 billion (1%-2% growth) to Meta’s top line every year between 2024 and 2027 based on our estimate of Twitter’s average revenue per user and its user growth."
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