Should You Be Running Ads on Threads Yet? Here Is What Just Changed

Meta has expanded Threads carousel and video ads globally. The platform now has over 350 million monthly users and CPMs are still low. Here is what formats are available, which brands are likely to see early returns, and how to run your first campaign without wasting budget.

Threads launched as a text-first platform and for most of its early life, advertisers watched it from a distance. It had the audience but not the ad inventory. Then Meta began a slow, region-by-region rollout of ads on Threads in late 2025, starting with single-image formats and gradually expanding from there.

The shift that matters now: carousel ads and video ads on Threads are no longer limited to select markets. Meta expanded both formats globally in July 2026. If you run Meta Ads, both formats are now accessible to you through Meta Ads Manager using your existing campaigns and creative assets. You do not need a separate account or a new setup process.

Whether you should actually spend budget there is a different question, and the answer depends on your brand, your audience, and how comfortable you are operating on a platform where ad performance benchmarks are still thin. Here is an honest breakdown.

What Just Expanded on Threads?

Meta announced the global expansion of two Threads ad formats in July 2026: static carousel ads, which display multiple images in a swipeable sequence, and video ads, which play inline within the Threads feed. Both formats were previously available only in limited markets as part of a phased rollout that began when Threads first opened to advertisers.

The expansion also brought post-view attribution to Instagram Reels at the same time, which is a separate but related development. Meta is clearly pushing to make its newer surfaces monetize at a rate closer to the core Facebook and Instagram feed.

Threads itself has grown significantly. The platform crossed 350 million monthly active users in early 2026, according to Meta’s own disclosures. That is not Facebook-scale, but it is large enough to support meaningful reach campaigns for most brand categories, particularly in markets like the US, UK, Brazil, Japan, and India where adoption has been strongest.

What Ad Formats Are Now Live?

Currently on Threads, three paid formats are running: single-image ads, carousel ads, and video ads. Sponsored text posts, where the creative looks like an organic Threads post with a sponsored label, have been available since the initial rollout and remain the most native-feeling format on the platform.

Carousel ads on Threads work the same way they do on Instagram and Facebook: up to ten cards, each with an image, a headline, and a destination URL. The swipeable format suits product showcasing, step-by-step content, and comparison-style creative well. Given that Threads is still a text-forward environment in terms of organic content, a well-produced carousel that feels genuinely editorial rather than overtly promotional tends to perform better than something that reads as a direct response ad lifted from Facebook.

Video ads play inline in the Threads feed. Meta has not published separate aspect ratio requirements for Threads video that differ from its standard specs, so the same vertical or square video formats you use for Reels or Stories are compatible. Keep the first three seconds punchy since autoplay on a text-heavy platform means you are competing with content that takes zero effort to consume.

Who Should Test Threads Ads Now?

Not every brand will get the same value from Threads at this stage. The audience skews toward tech-forward, creator-economy, and media-adjacent users. Think startups, SaaS products, consumer apps, media brands, and B2C services that target 25 to 40 year-olds who are early adopters of new platforms.

Brands in these categories have the most to gain from testing now, specifically because CPMs on Threads are still significantly lower than on Facebook or Instagram. When a new placement opens up inside Meta Ads Manager, the early period before it becomes widely adopted by advertisers is typically when cost-per-result is most favorable. Once the placement matures and more advertisers pile in, CPMs normalize upward. The window for low-cost testing is real but it does not stay open forever.

D2C e-commerce brands with visual products are also reasonable candidates for carousel testing, particularly if their Instagram carousel creative is already proven. The incremental effort to extend that creative to Threads is low, and the audience overlap is not complete enough to make it redundant.

Brands that are likely to see poor early returns: heavy local service businesses (plumbers, dentists, home services) where geographic targeting precision matters more than reach, and brands whose audience skews older than 45, where Threads penetration is thin.

Threads Ads vs. Instagram Ads

The most common question from advertisers already running Instagram campaigns is whether Threads is additive or just cannibalizing the same audience at a different CPM. The honest answer is: both, depending on how you set it up.

Threads and Instagram share the same underlying user base because Threads accounts are linked to Instagram accounts. There is meaningful audience overlap. If you run the same creative across both placements in Advantage+ without thinking about it, you may reach the same person on both surfaces, which raises frequency without adding incremental reach.

The smarter approach is to use Threads as a separate placement with deliberately different creative, or to use it specifically for top-of-funnel awareness campaigns where you want broad reach and are not optimizing toward last-click conversion. The text-feed environment of Threads rewards content that informs or provokes thought more than content that shouts a discount code.

CPMs on Threads are running lower than Instagram in most reported early data. Until more advertisers enter the placement and drive prices up, the cost-efficiency argument for including Threads in a broad awareness mix is reasonable. Just do not expect to swap your bottom-funnel Instagram retargeting campaign directly onto Threads and see the same ROAS. The use cases are different.

Setting Up Your First Campaign

Threads ads are managed entirely within Meta Ads Manager alongside your Facebook and Instagram campaigns. There is no separate interface or account requirement.

When creating a campaign, go to ad set level and click Placements. Choose Manual Placements, then find Threads under the Meta family of apps. You can add it alongside Instagram and Facebook, or isolate it as a standalone placement to get clean performance data. Running it in isolation for the first two to four weeks is worth the extra setup effort because it lets you see actual Threads-specific CPMs and engagement rates rather than having them blended into a combined placement report.

For creative, start with your best-performing Instagram carousel or video assets. If they perform on Instagram, they will likely perform on Threads with the same audience. Adapt headlines to feel slightly more conversational since the Threads feed is more text-forward than the Instagram visual feed, and a hard sell headline can feel out of place.

Set a modest test budget. The goal of a first Threads campaign is learning, not scaling. Run for at least two weeks before drawing conclusions, since new placements take time to exit the learning phase and deliver stable delivery.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Lumping Threads into Advantage+ without a separate creative strategy

Letting Meta’s Advantage+ placements automatically include Threads without reviewing the creative means you are running Facebook-optimized ads in a very different feed environment. Threads rewards a more editorial, less promotional tone. Creative that looks native to the platform will always outperform creative that was clearly designed for somewhere else.

Judging Threads by last-click ROAS in the first month

Threads is an awareness and discovery surface right now, not a bottom-funnel conversion channel. Evaluating it against last-click ROAS the way you would a Google Shopping campaign will make it look like it is failing when it may actually be contributing to a longer consideration path. Use view-through attribution or look at assisted conversions alongside direct ones.

Ignoring comment quality as a signal

Threads is a conversation-first platform. Comments on your ads are visible and public in a way that feels more prominent than on Instagram. If your ad creative triggers negative or off-brand comments, that affects perception more sharply on Threads than on other Meta placements. Monitor ad comments during your test period and turn off creative that is attracting friction.

What This Means Going Forward

Meta is clearly committed to making Threads a significant ad revenue contributor. The progression from text-only ads to single images to carousels and video in under a year is fast by Meta’s historical rollout pace. More formats will follow. Shopping integrations and lead gen objectives are likely the next additions, given that those are Meta’s core revenue drivers on Facebook and Instagram.

For teams managing Meta Ads campaigns, Threads is worth a dedicated test in Q3 2026 while CPMs are still favorable. The brands that build early learnings on the platform, understand what creative resonates, and establish campaign structures will have a meaningful head start when the placement matures and becomes a standard part of every media plan.

This is roughly where Instagram Stories was in 2017 and Reels was in 2021. Early movers in both cases built an advantage that took competitors years to close. Threads is not guaranteed to follow the same trajectory, but the early signals on user growth and engagement make it worth a controlled test rather than a wait-and-see approach.

At Incisive Growth, we are already running early Threads tests for select clients with strong visual brand identity and a younger core demographic. The CPMs are compelling and the learning curve from Instagram is low enough that the setup cost is minimal. If you are already running Meta Ads effectively, adding Threads to your test roadmap in the next 60 days is a low-risk, potentially high-upside move.

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