A Dubai lifestyle creator with 180K on Instagram told us she posts on Threads daily, has 12K followers there, and has not been paid for a single Threads deliverable in 14 months. That is the gap between creator adoption and brand budget on this platform.
Where Threads fits in 2026
Threads is most useful as an audience-relationship layer for creators who already have Instagram pull. It does not pay directly. It does build the kind of comment-section community that translates into deeper engagement on monetized formats.
Brand budget is barely there
Across UAE creator deals on Inflink, Threads-only deliverables are a rounding error. Brands occasionally include Threads as a free add-on to Instagram packages. We have seen almost no standalone Threads budget land in 2026.
Who actually uses it well
- Writers and journalists testing ideas
- Founders building credibility outside their main business
- Lifestyle creators with strong text personalities
- Niche communities like UAE finance, parenting, and fitness
Should you spend time on it?
If you genuinely enjoy writing short text and your audience overlaps with the heavy users above, Threads pays back in audience warmth. If you are forcing posts to chase a platform that brands ignore, your time is better spent on Reels.
When this might change
If Meta opens Threads to ads at scale and gets brand-side measurement working, expect a faster shift than Reels saw. Watch for ad inventory news through 2026 and 2027 before adding Threads to your rate sheet.