Advertisers are eagerly watching how Meta’s new Threads messaging app develops over the next few months as they look for a new social channel to reach consumers while Twitter continues to struggle.
Instagram Threads debuted last week and has amassed over 100 million sign-ups, which has caught the attention of numerous companies, several digital marketing agencies and industry experts told CNBC.
Natasha Blumenkron, the vice president of paid social for marketing firm Tinuiti, said that Threads has become the topic du jour for her company’s clients, who are trying to figure out how the messaging app fits into their existing social media strategies.
Many businesses that have stopped advertising on Twitter over brand-safety concerns, including the reported increase in racist and hateful speech on the platform under the ownership of Tesla chief Elon Musk, are excited about the possibility of advertising on Threads once that option becomes available, Blumenkron said.
Meta is currently more focused on building the core Threads product as opposed to monetizing the app, Instagram head Adam Mosseri has said in various interviews and a post on Threads. Many popular features that are common to other social apps, like the ability to use hashtags or read posts in chronological order, are not currently available, and Mosseri has said that his team is working to incorporate some of those tools.
Blumenkron explained that many brands are interested in the potential for Threads to add more features like chronological feeds and the ability to search for hashtags. These features can be helpful for companies to ensure that their posts are being shown to the right audience and helps them understand which trending topics could inform their content.
“When we think about playing in the paid space, brands really just want to make sure that their content is reaching relevant audiences,” Blumenkron said. “You’re paying to play at the end of the day, and you want to make sure you’re where it makes the most sense.”
Rachel Tipograph, the CEO of marketing technology firm MikMak, said that her company’s clientele of consumer product firms and retailers are also interested in advertising opportunities on Threads, as they consistently try to “find new eyeballs,” particularly as Twitter’s brand safety problems have continued to increase.
MikMak was able to deduce that many of the company’s clients significantly pulled back on their Twitter advertising spend based on how much traffic the firm records from the paid advertising campaigns it helps manage for customers, she said.
For example, MikMak logged a 42% decline in Twitter traffic between April and May, indicating that companies were pausing their paid advertising campaigns. When former NBCUniversal global advertising chief Linda Yaccarino became Twitter CEO in June, MikMak recorded a 21% increase in Twitter traffic, suggesting that for some brands, the longtime advertising executive’s arrival at Twitter caused some companies to increase their spending, Tipograph said.
It’s too early to tell whether the debut of Threads will impact Twitter’s advertising sales as of now, Tipograph added.
Besides Threads’ increasingly growing user base, Tipograph said that companies are interested in Threads because it shares similar backend administration tools to Instagram, meaning that corporate social media managers could have an easier time using the platform. Additionally, companies that already have Instagram accounts can essentially port their followers over to Threads rather than building an audience from scratch.
“It’s the most instant onboarding experience I’ve ever experienced in the history of my career, and my entire career has been in social,” Tipograph said.
Still, Tipograph believes that in order for Threads to have a major impact on online advertising, it’s going to need users who regularly interact with each other on the site, which could be quantified by the number of daily active users, an established marketing metric.
For Tal Jacobson, the incoming CEO of digital advertising firm Perion Network, “the number of sign-ups doesn’t mean a lot.” Although it was easy for current Instagram users to create Threads accounts, he said, it’s unclear how active they will be on the service.
“The number of conversations is really the number you need to look for,” Jacobson said, regarding which statistics would be most helpful for advertisers.
Since Threads is so new, it’s unclear which kind of audience Threads is attracting, Tipograph said. Companies will be watching to see if the messaging app attracts a different type of audience than merely existing Instagram users, which will impact their marketing plans, she added.
Instagram’s Mosseri recently said that Threads will not actively promote discussions around news and politics, and the company believes that catering to topics such as fashion and sports would be less divisive. Because of this, some of Twitter’s core audience, who use the service to keep up with the rapid-fire nature of news and politics, could be less interested in using Threads, if the platform is geared towards lifestyle and entertainment.
Even if Threads doesn’t capture an audience interested in news and politics, it could still be a good business for Meta, according to Brian Wieser, a media consultant and former technology analyst. The total addressable audience for entertainment and lifestyle content may be much larger than the number of people interested in hard news, which could be a “a better business” to focus on and less of a reputational risk, Wieser said.
Wieser believes it’s possible for Threads to represent “a nice, incremental multibillion-dollar business” for Meta if it’s able to keep users glued to the service, and if it doesn’t morph into a video app that’s indistinguishable from others.
Angelo Carusone, the chairman and president of the Media Matters for America nonprofit, said that if Instagram chooses to focus on more lifestyle content than hard news, it won’t have the same relevancy as Twitter to influence national and global affairs.
“It might have commercial viability, but it wouldn’t have any real relevancy,” Carusone said.
Media Matters and other groups including the Free Press and Accountable Tech urged advertisers to stop spending on Twitter when Musk took over last fall, citing an increase in hate speech and other concerns.
Although Threads may not currently have the same amount of offensive content on its service that drives away users and advertisers, Carusone said that it’s possible that the same bad actors and trolls who have increased their activity on Twitter could do so on Threads.
Carusone noted that Nick Fuentes, a live-streamer and outspoken antisemite who was banned from Instagram in 2019, recently said that he created a fake Instagram and Threads account and urged his viewers to “blow up and red pill some people on there.”
If Meta isn’t prepared to handle users intent on spreading misinformation and divisive content on Threads, the messaging app risks alienating advertisers in addition to users, Carusone said, adding that Meta isn’t free from the issues plaguing Twitter, particularly after Meta’s layoffs on its trust and safety teams.
“My point is that Threads basically magnifies a problem that Instagram has [that] Facebook has never solved,” Carusone said. “And I think that is a real thing.”
A sign with the Toyota logo in Surrey, England on August, 2023
Peter Dazeley | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Toyota Motor on Wednesday raised the operating profit forecast for its financial year ending in March, while flagging a 1.45 trillion yen hit from U.S. tariffs.
The company, which revised its operating profit outlook to 3.4 trillion yen from 3.2 trillion yen forecast earlier, missed profit estimates for the quarter ended September.
“Despite the impact of U.S. tariffs, strong demand supported by the competitiveness of our products has led to increased sales volumes mainly in Japan and North America and has expanded value chain profits,” Toyota said in its earnings report.
Here are Toyota’s September quarter results compared with mean estimates from LSEG:
Revenue: 12.38 trillion yen (about $81 billion) vs. 12.18 trillion yen
Operating profit: 834 billion yen vs. 863.1 billion yen
The world’s largest carmaker by sales volume reported a nearly 28% quarterly drop in profit, year on year, while revenue increased over 8%. Net income reached 972.9 billion yen, up
Toyota released 6-month results — from April to September — and the quarterly numbers have been calculated by CNBC, based on company statement and LSEG data.
The decline in the September quarter’s operating profit represents the second straight drop since the U.S. introduced “reciprocal” tariffs in April. Tokyo in July clinched a trade deal with Washington, bringing down tariffs on its exports to the U.S. to 15% from the 25% initially proposed by President Donald Trump. The 15% duties took effect on Aug. 7.
The company flagged that tariffs remain the largest drag on Toyota’s profit in the U.S., while factors such exchange rate fluctuations and increased expenses hit earnings in Japan, .
A Toyota executive said in the earnings call that the company was “assessing challenges” and “making preparations” for a plan to ship made-in-U.S. vehicles to customers in Japan, as to align with a new investment framework between Tokyo and Washington.
They added that the plan may not be “economically rational,” but could make certain products more available to Japanese customers.
Tariffs bite
The impacts of U.S. tariffs have been sharply felt across Japan’s auto industry, with Japanese shipments of automobiles to the U.S. dropping 24.2% in September, though this was slightly less compared to the 28.4% drop in August.
While Toyota has extensive North American production, about one-fifth of its U.S. sales still depend on Japanese imports and tariff costs on those imports are being absorbed rather than passed through, according to Liz Lee, associate director at Counterpoint Research.
“We’re expecting profitability to remain under pressure in [the current quarter] as tariff and currency headwinds persist, with gradual improvement likely from the [March quarter] onwards,” Lee told CNBC in a statement.
“Profitability should recover modestly next fiscal year if trade costs stabilize and the yen weakens, though rising EV competition will continue to cap upside potential,” she added.
Toyota has increasingly been leaning into electrified vehicles, which accounted for 46.9% of Toyota and Lexus vehicle sales in the first half of its fiscal year. These sales were primarily driven by hybrid electric vehicles in regions such as North America and China.
However, Toyota’s limited lineup of fully electric battery-powered vehicles could leave it more exposed to competition from Chinese EV players in Europe and Southeast Asia, Lee said.
Despite decreasing profits, Toyota has continued to show strong global demand. The company recently reported that vehicle sales, including its luxury brand Lexus, reached 5.3 million in the nine months to September, a 4.7% increase from a year earlier. In it’s earnings report, the company said it would continue to focus on increasing sales volume and cutting costs.
Nvidia will help train and mentor emerging deep tech startups in India as a founding member of a $2 billion investment alliance, deepening its presence in the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem.
The U.S. chipmaker has joined the India Deep Tech Alliance (IDTA) — a group of private equity and venture capital investors pledging $2 billion for deep tech investments — as a founding member. Deep tech startups are an umbrella term for emerging companies in semiconductors, space, AI, biotech, robotics, and energy.
The world’s most valuable company will offer technical talks and training through its Nvidia Deep Learning Institute to emerging startups in India.
Nvidia wants to “provide guidance on AI systems, developer enablement, and responsible deployment, and to collaborate with policymakers, investors, and entrepreneurs,” Vishal Dhupar, Nvidia’s managing director of South Asia, said.
Nvidia did not disclose any financial investment, timeline, or training targets, and did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment.
“Nvidia’s depth of expertise in AI systems, software, and ecosystem-building will benefit our network of investors and entrepreneurs,” said Sriram Viswanathan, founding executive council member of the IDTA.
He told CNBC that the pace of innovation is accelerating in India and there could be a “significant number of Indian deep tech companies of global repute” in the next five years.
The Indian government is also actively encouraging research and innovation in the deep tech space through major initiatives, including over 100 billion rupees ($1.1 billion USD) under its AI Mission and a separate 1 trillion rupees ($11.2 billion) Research, Development and Innovation Scheme Fund targeting deep tech companies.
On Monday, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced that the country will host the AI Impact Summit in February next year.
The event is likely to see the participation of heads of state and top policymakers, along with business leaders such as Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of NVIDIA, and Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind.
Nvidia’s commitment in India coincides with rising global interest in India’s AI market, where OpenAI counts the country as its second-largest user base. U.S. rivals are also deepening ties: Google recently pledged $15 billion to build an AI hub in the southern city of Visakhapatnam.
CNBC’s Jim Cramer suggested Wall Street is too fixated the on large valuations of certain tech and speculative stocks, chalking up Tuesday’s market-wide decline in part to Palantir‘s nearly 8% loss despite strong earnings results.
“The larger issue is that we’re at the moment where money managers, when asked if the market’s too expensive, immediately think of the high-flying speculative stocks or those in the high-growth artificial intelligence column, and so they warn you away from the entire asset class,” he said. “These guys don’t think of the other 334 stocks in the S&P 500 that sell for less than 23 times earnings — those aren’t outrageous.”
Declines in Palantir and other artificial intelligence companies helped bring stocks down on Tuesday, with the S&P 500 losing 1.17%,the Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 0.53% and the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite sinking 2.04%. Palantir managed to beat the estimates and offer solid guidance, citing growth in the artificial intelligence business. But investors worried broadly about the huge valuations of tech giants that have been leading the market to new heights.
Investors who saw Palantir as their “north star” were alarmed by its big pullback after a great quarter, according to Cramer. The fears triggered “a raft of selling” as these investors questioned the market as a whole, he continued.
Palantir can be a tough stock to classify, Cramer suggested, saying it straddles two different market segments — one centered around tech and artificial intelligence, and another focused on speculative stocks. He noted that the data-driven software company is very lucrative and fast growing, and it “defies easy description.” He listed off a number of its business arms — including its work as a defense contractor and as a consultant for companies looking to modernize and improve profitability.
To Cramer, it’s reasonable to consider that there’s nothing wrong with Palantir, and it just needs “to cool off in order to grow into its market capitalization.”
“Sure, there are indeed some stocks that are visibly overvalued, and when you pull them apart, many of these valuations can be justified, some can’t,” he said. “I think the Magnificent Seven can be justified on the pace of the growth that’s ahead of them. Same, ultimately, with Palantir.”
