Threads reaches 150 million daily users and is ramping up ads

Threads has grown to 150 million daily active users. Mark Zuckerberg shared the latest milestone for the company’s text-based app during Meta’s third-quarter earnings call. The company previously reported in August that Threads had reached more than 400 million monthly users.

Zuckerberg, who has mused that Threads could become Meta’s next billion-person app, said that it was “on track to become the leader in its category.” He also said that time spent in the app had increased by 10 percent, which he credited to improvements to the company’s AI recommendation systems.

On Wednesday, Instagram chief Adam Mosseri said that Meta was also “exploring” algorithm personalization controls for Threads. The company is currently testing the ability to “tune” Instagram’s algorithmic recommendations.

As Threads has grown, Meta also confirmed that ads are ramping up on the platform. During the call with analysts, Meta CFO Susan Li said that “ads are now running globally” in the Threads feed. The company had previously brought ads to Threads users in 30 countries following a small test earlier this year. This week, the company also announced that it would expand the type of ad formats on Threads, including video ads. “We’re following our typical monetization playbook of optimizing the ads formats and performance,” Li said.