January 28, 2026
The low down on Threads rolling out Ads
Crikey, Meta has started rolling ads into Threads timelines globally. Everyone will talk about the media opportunity. That’s the boring bit.
The real story is behaviour. Threads is turning into a recommendation-led conversation engine, wired into the biggest distribution machine in social. It’s an X rival with a different default, less chaos, more “safe enough for brands”, more algorithmic matchmaking.
If you’re a senior marketer, this matters for one reason.
Threads is where people practise opinion, test identity, and decide who feels credible, before they ever click your site. Basically, done right, it is brilliant for building trust.
It’s quietly become an important channel
Threads is past 400m monthly actives, and Meta has cited 150m daily actives. It has also overtaken X on global daily mobile users. Engagement rates per post look stronger than X in median terms, even if X still wins on absolute volume.
That mix, high growth, lower saturation, improving recommendations, plus monetisation, usually signals one thing.
Threads is past 400m monthly actives, and Meta has cited 150m daily actives. It has also overtaken X on global daily mobile users. Engagement rates per post look stronger than X in median terms, even if X still wins on absolute volume.
That mix, high growth, lower saturation, improving recommendations, plus monetisation, usually signals one thing.
The platform is moving from “nice little side app” to “proper channel with consequences”.
What makes Threads special then
If you’ve spent any time on Threads and felt a little jolt of “oh, this is different”, that’s the signal. It’s not just another app. It’s a different social mood.
People show up mid-thought. You see more first drafts of opinions, more caveats, more humans admitting they’re still working it out. It feels intimate, and it makes you trust the speaker faster.
The replies are where reputation gets built. In a slightly scrappy, public, half-chaotic way where someone asks a hard question, somebody else adds context.
That matters, because this is how most of us judge brands now. You don’t believe the post. You believe how they behave underneath it, if you get what i mean
Specificity travels. What I mean is real names, real examples, real numbers. In the detail. That’s why Threads can feel oddly high-signal on a good day.
There’s also a softer kind of identity play happening. People are testing what they stand for, what they’ll tolerate, and what they’ll defend, without the constant pile-on energy you see elsewhere. For B2C that’s gold if you’re values-led. For B2B it’s even better, because expertise reads as a form of safety.
Then there’s the quiet distribution layer. Threads is screenshot social. The best lines get lifted and passed around in places you’ll never see, WhatsApp, Slack, DMs, group chats. Your words travel without you, which is brilliant when you’re clear, and a bit terrifying when you’re sloppy.
And it’s global in a way that can catch you out. You can post something that feels very UK, then the replies come from Brazil and India and the US, and suddenly you’re in a wider room than you planned for.
One more thing I don’t think we’re talking about enough. Threads is building a habit of public sense-making. People arrive to compare notes, to check what the smart crowd thinks, to get a quick read on whether something is true, risky, overhyped, or worth their time. That’s a behaviour shift, and it’s why ads landing now is such a big deal.
Oh! But I promise you, this is a different ball game
Ads in the feed flips the incentives, and I know that sounds obvious, but sit with it for a second.
The moment a platform starts properly monetising, it starts chasing the behaviours that keep people there. More time in app, more scrolling, more replies, more little rabbit holes you fall into when you meant to be doing your actual job.
So yes, more brands will show up. More agencies will ship more stuff. The feed will get louder. If you’ve already been feeling that slight dread of “do we really need another place to be present”, you’re not alone.
But this is the bit that matters. Loud doesn’t win. Coherent wins.
The brands that do well in this phase tend to be the ones that sound like they’ve got a brain and a backbone. A point of view you can repeat. A voice that doesn’t feel like it’s been sanded down by five rounds of internal feedback.
And that’s where it gets emotional, because it asks something uncomfortable of you. It asks you to show up in public with a bit of conviction, then hold your nerve when someone replies.
Threads is becoming the “credible middle”
Threads is carving out a different space, and it’s subtle. It feels like a calmer room where people are willing to compare notes. You can have a disagreement without it turning into a food fight. You can say “I don’t know yet” and not get eaten alive.
That’s why it matters for brands.
Credibility gets built in tiny moments here. Someone reads a line and thinks, fair point. Someone sees how you answer a hard question and decides you’re competent. Someone quotes you because you’ve said the thing they’ve been trying to articulate all week.
Ads make this more important, because you’ll be able to buy your way closer to those moments.
You still can’t buy the bit that matters. The feeling that you belong there, that you’re worth listening to, that you behave well when the conversation moves underneath you.
This is why Threads matters strategically.
Threads is part of the wider shift from follower graphs to recommendation graphs.
Here’s what that means in normal-person language. For years, social was mostly “people who follow you see you”. You built an audience, you posted, the platform served it to them, give or take.
Recommendation-led feeds work differently. The platform watches what someone reads, replies to, shares, lingers on, and it starts serving them posts from people and brands they’ve never chosen. Your content gets put in front of strangers because the system thinks it fits their current interest.
That’s why Threads can feel like it gives you sudden reach even when your follower count is tiny. It’s also why it can feel brutally quiet when your message is vague. The machine can’t work out who it’s for, and humans can’t work out why they should care.
This is why Threads matters .
It behaves like a public credibility test. You don’t just show up for your own community, you show up for people who are evaluating you cold. The way you sound, the stance you take, the way you handle replies, all of that becomes the proof.
The brand you are when nobody’s shopping
Most B2C brands treat “conversation” as a tone-of-voice exercise. Threads turns it into a trust exercise.
When the algorithm serves your post into someone’s day, you’re not competing with other brands. You’re competing with people. With creators. With actual opinions. With culture. BTW, I have always said this. It is really important to remember it when you plan for any social.
The brands that will earn attention are the ones that feel like they’ve got a backbone.
There’s also a second-order effect that’s easy to miss.
Threads’ Instagram linkage means people will bounce between “I saw this thought” and “I saw this product”. That is a new kind of low-friction persuasion. It will feel like reassurance more than classic social commerce.
Let me explain. imagine a challenger food brand posts a blunt, useful take on pricing pressure and ingredient swaps, the replies turn into a mini focus group, then the next day the same people notice the brand’s IG Reel about the product. The purchase rarely comes from one post; it comes from the feeling that the brand is honest.
B2B: the place where trust gets banked
If you sell anything expensive, complex, regulated, or hard to switch, your buyer isn’t shopping for features. They’re shopping for confidence. They want to feel, in their gut, that choosing you won’t turn into a six‑month headache and an awkward meeting with Finance.
Threads is built for the bit of the journey that happens before anyone admits they’re buying. The lurking phase. The “I’m just keeping an eye on this” phase. The bit where people quietly follow smart voices, sanity-check claims, and see who can explain something complicated.
And it’s public. Which means your credibility gets tested in front of other people.
This is why Threads could matter for B2B in 2026.
It gives you a chance to build public competence. Being consistently clear. Being consistently specific. Being consistently helpful in the moments people are trying to make sense of a problem.
Because the feed is recommendation-led, a strong niche voice can travel beyond your follower base. You don’t need millions. You need a point of view that lands with the exact kind of person who has to say “yes” internally.
Ads change the politics inside companies
When ads arrive, organisations start treating the platform like a media channel. Budgets appear. Dashboards appear. The CFO asks what it’s doing.
If your leadership team thinks social is “content”, Threads will expose that fast.
Because the value is not in impressions. It’s in how your organisation shows up in public conversation, and whether your point of view is coherent across humans, brand pages, and paid.
Threads will reward organisations that can behave like people at scale.
That’s the hard bit. Also the whole point.
So, This is what you have to think about
- Threads will make brand voice a board-level issue
Not because it’s a “new platform”. Because it’s a visible place where your organisation’s competence, empathy, and honesty get assessed, in front of peers.
When the platform is recommendation-led, one sloppy claim, one waffly post, one tone-deaf line can travel. Equally. - Paid reach will become cheap, credibility will become expensive
Meta can manufacture distribution. It cannot manufacture trust.
Threads ads will be easy to buy. Being worth listening to will be the scarce asset. - Threads is the closest thing to “brand as conversation” that’s been viable for mainstream brands in years
The internet never stopped being conversational (you can see it in our last newsletter on social in 2016). Brands just got tired of hearing what people think.
Threads pulls you back into the conversation, but in a less hostile environment than X, and with Meta’s scale behind it. That’s a rare combination.
If you’ve missed community, missed dialogue, missed learning in public, Threads is a second chance.
Threads is a preview of what social is becoming
Threads with ads is a signal, and it’s bigger than a “new placement”. It’s a sign that social is moving deeper into public meaning-making.
Your job, whether you’re B2C or B2B, is to be the brand that makes sense when someone meets you in the wild. In a feed. In a comment. In a quote. In a screenshot someone shares in a private Slack.
Because that’s how decisions get shaped now.
If you want, we can pressure-test your Threads stance, what your brand should be known for, what your leaders can credibly say, and how to avoid becoming another beige cross-post in the scroll.