Mark Zuckerberg says Threads has 175M+ MAUs, up from 150M in April, ahead of its one-year anniversary on July 5; source: Meta may turn on ads in Threads in 2025
A year and a half ago, Threads was but a twinkle in Mark Zuckerberg's eye. — Now, the rival to Elon Musk's X has reached …
Context & Ripple Effects
Threads’ audience growth has continued beyond its early launch surge: Meta reported just under 100 million monthly users in October 2023, then more than 130 million monthly users in February and more than 150 million in April. The new figure makes the service’s retention and continued expansion, rather than launch-day signups, the relevant signal.
The reported 2025 advertising plan matters because it would begin testing whether Threads can become a commercial product inside Meta’s broader social platform portfolio, not merely a challenger to Elon Musk’s X.
First-order effects
- Meta has a larger monthly audience on which to build a potential Threads ad business; advertisers and creators gain a clearer signal that the product may become a sustained distribution channel.
- No ad rollout is confirmed: the immediate change is heightened planning pressure around ad formats, measurement, and user experience if Meta proceeds in 2025.
Second-order effects
- A Threads ad launch would give marketers another Meta-managed placement, potentially shifting some social ad experimentation and budget allocation toward the new feed.
- X faces a more credible rival for text-based social engagement as Threads pairs audience growth with a prospective monetization path, though advertiser demand will depend on Meta’s eventual product design.
Third-order effects
- If growth and monetization persist, text-centric social platforms could increasingly compete on the ability to turn existing social graphs into advertiser-ready inventory rather than on user acquisition alone.
- The broader test is whether Meta can add ads without slowing the engagement trajectory that took Threads from just under 100 million monthly users to its current scale; that trade-off will shape the platform’s long-term position.
The trend: Threads is part of a wider shift from viral social launches toward proving durable engagement and then converting that audience into advertising inventory.