What is Threads?

A social media platform created by Meta, combining the photo/video sharing opportunities of Instagram, combined with the real time conversation aspect of X (formerly Twitter).  It launched over the summer, and surged quickly to over 100 million users within five days.  India led the pack for downloads, followed by Brazil, then the US.  Like most platforms, it saw a surge of people looking to test it out, followed buy a quick drop in time spent and volume of new users (now around 10 million active users).  We’ll be watching closely to see how that initial surge translates into an active userbase.  It is not available in the EU at this time due to regulatory hurdles and privacy concerns.

What do I need to know as an advertiser?

Your audience is there already, and there is opportunity to create (organic) brand profiles.  There are no paid advertising opportunities (yet), nor is there a DM function or even hashtags.

It’s worth considering:
– Is my target audience there, and is the conversation more valuable there than other platforms?
– Is there a strong social strategy and capacity to monitor and create content on an additional platform?
– The tie in with Instagram means that brand handles are already reserved, so if the answer to either of the above is anything less than an excited “yes” it might be worth holding off strategically on a branded profile.  There’s nothing worse than a non-responsive account.

As we see it, it’s worth downloading and trying out from a personal perspective.  If your brand has a strong social media strategy in place already then setting up on Threads might make sense, though from a paid advertising perspective, it’s a “wait and see” game.