App – Affiliate Marketing Programs

Threads is the newest app to take social media by storm.
With over 150 million downloads, brands and marketers alike are eyeing the platform.
Insider spoke with influencer marketing experts and creators about sponsored content on Threads.

There may not be hashtags yet on Instagram’s new app Threads, but that’s not stopping #ads from appearing all over the latest social-media platform.

Within two days of Threads’ launch on July 5, certain brands and influencers started posting paid, sponsored content.

Streaming platform Hulu inked a deal via influencer-marketing company Influential with comedy creator Adam Rose, who has an audience of over 4 million on TikTok and was given early access to Threads. Meanwhile, creator-economy startup Hashtag Pay Me partnered with micro influencer Kristen Bousquet.

Hashtag Pay Me offered Bousquet $200 to promote the company on her Instagram stories and on Threads just a day after the app launched.

“Once we finished that partnership, I used that as an intro to reach back out to other brands that I’ve worked with previously,” Bousquet told Insider. She’s since posted more sponsored content to Threads.

Hulu worked with creator Adam Rose on a sponsored Threads post.

Screengrab/Threads

Threads has posted record growth with more than 150 million downloads in its first two weeks. Brands are quickly taking note of its potential.

“Anytime there’s a new platform that comes out, there are a couple of things that brands get excited about,” said Krishna Subramanian, cofounder of influencer-marketing platform Captiv8. “One is the eyeballs and being that first mover and doing something that’s very unique to that platform that gets a lot of exciting attention. As you start to move on, it really comes down to how you can drive results from that platform specifically.”

Affiliate links from platforms like LTK and Amazon are also peppered throughout the Threads feed.

“With a new platform like this, we always tell our existing creators, ‘Look, this is an expansion opportunity for you,'” said Amber Venz Box, cofounder and president of LTK. “We also look to see who really creates something out of this new space. We will see a new generation of creators who take advantage of this first-mover opportunity that only comes every few years.”

Parent company Meta is keen to make Threads as advertising-friendly as its sister app Instagram. A week after the app launched, the company was already looking into introducing branded content tools, per Axios.

The tools have yet to launch, and even then, marketers will need concrete metrics to judge how paid content performs. Several influencer-marketing experts told Insider that Threads is just too new, and while it has rudimentary metrics like likes, replies, and reposts, it lacks crucial data like demographics, impressions, reach, and post saves.

“As a marketer, you need data in hand,” said Alessandro Bogliari, cofounder and CEO of The Influencer Marketing Factory. “Without data, you have nothing.”

Determining how much creators should get paid will also take a while, and some are bound to lose out.

“There are no benchmarks for what creators should be pricing for a Thread, so it feels like the Wild Wild West right now,” said Ayomi Samaraweera, founder of startup Canopy for Creators.

Insider spoke with 14 influencer marketing experts, creators, and startup founders to see what the early days of brand partnerships look like on Threads. For some, the new turf is unlocking opportunity and expanding reach. Others are skeptical of the platform because of issues like data collection, and the desire to keep their feeds “ad-free.”

Meta did not respond to Insider’s request for comment.

Threads is a shiny new object for influencer marketing

When Hulu teamed up with Rose for the company’s first sponsored post on Threads promoting the animated series “Futurama,” it measured success on “innovation and buzz,” for lack of better metrics, Brittany Mehciz, Hulu’s VP of social media and influencer partnerships, said in a statement.

The sponsored post, framed as “Which Futurama character are you?” has more than 760 likes and over 140 replies. To measure the success of the Hulu promotion, Rose is eyeing engagement on the post.

“How many likes is it getting compared to my organic posts?” Rose said. “And more importantly with a particular piece of content like this where it’s question-and-answer based, how many replies are you getting?”

To begin with, Threads sponsorships are not likely to be exclusive to the app, and brands may ask creators to post on other social-media platforms when discussing a paid collaboration. Both Bousquet’s and Rose’s deal included cross-posting to Instagram, for example.

Many influencer-marketing executives see a lot of potential in the direct relationship between Instagram and Threads.

“The shareability between platforms is something that’s quite attractive,” said Thomas Walters, the Europe CEO and cofounder of influencer-marketing agency Billion Dollar Boy. “It’s a simpler ask to pull together a program that’s featured across such closely related apps.”

Besides sponsored posts, affiliate marketing is also finding its mojo on the app, like on Amazon Prime Day.

Ajai Guyot posted an Amazon link to Threads during Amazon Prime Day.

Screengrab/Threads

As a part of the annual event, which came a week after Threads launched, creator Ajai Guyot posted an affiliate link to curtains that were on sale and found it much more seamless than sharing a link on an Instagram story or directing people to a link in bio.

“I’ve been tracking my Amazon storefront and dashboard, seeing how many times the link was clicked,” Guyot said. “And so far it’s more than it’s been when I put it in my stories.”

Threads is also an appealing Twitter alternative to brands. After years of grappling with a lack of moderation and polarizing content on Twitter, advertisers may find a boon in Threads.

After Elon Musk took over, brand safety has become even more of a concern, said Ryan Detert, founder and CEO of Influential.

Some brands and users who built most of their online presence and businesses on Twitter are starting to pull out or question whether to continue using it, including social-media consultant Matt Navarra, who’s used Twitter as the main platform for his business for years.

“There are a lot of people, and I would be one of them, that are keen to have a true Twitter alternative and a way to escape the platform of Twitter at this time because of what’s been going on there and what Elon Musk’s decisions have been,” Navarra said.

While Meta’s had its own moderation qualms, Instagram has become a top destination for advertisers and Threads could soon be added to their list of platforms to run sponsored content on.

To advertise or not to advertise

Even though many brands are taking active steps to integrate Threads into their marketing plans, some creators are hesitant to go all-in.

A few are carefully monitoring the app in the hopes that Meta will make good on its promise to soon introduce engagement analytics on Threads so that brands and creators can track how sponsored content performs.

Lifestyle creator Sooraj Saxena said he’s waiting for the platform to “mature a bit” before he adds it to his toolkit.

“I want more analytics to work with before I get started,” he said.

Others are also concerned about the way Threads collects user data. One video creator, who wished to remain anonymous for this story, said that he was concerned about how the platform stores information, accesses the camera and microphone, and more.

“I’m on enough apps already where they monitor me, so I don’t want to add another one to the mix,” the creator said.

Threads launched July 5.

Screengrab/Google Play/Instagram; Insider/Sydney Bradley

Some creators see Threads as a clean slate that should be free of influencer marketing.

“I have zero plans to monetize Threads. Ever. In fact, I don’t want to see it,” fashion and lifestyle creator Taryn Hicks told Insider. “As a creator, but also as a person who enjoys using the app, when you start monetizing platforms [and] putting ads in, is when apps start losing the fun and losing the vibe of that best friend chat. I don’t have ads in my group texts with my best friends.”

Some creators, like travel creator Jessica Ufuoma, are turning down sponsored content requests from brands for this reason.

“Threads being quite new, I’m taking a more cautious approach first,” said Ufuoma. “Introducing paid collabs at this time may be tone deaf.”

For these and other reasons, the app will need to launch new features fast — such as hashtags, improved search, trend discovery, and more — if it wants to keep the momentum going. If usage plummets, it won’t be worth it for brands to spend money marketing on the platform.