Telegram Ads and How You Can Use It for Your Business

09.09.2023

The Telegram Ads advertising platform was launched in December 2021. At first, it could only be used by big brands with large advertising budgets, like Amazon or https://vave.com/prematch, but now it's available to small businesses as well. Let's find out how the platform is organized and what to pay attention to when launching campaigns.

What Is Telegram Ads

Telegram Ads is Telegram's advertising platform. Through Telegram Ads, you can show ads to users who don't have a Telegram Premium subscription. Ads are broadcast in open channels with more than 1000 subscribers.

Ads are visible in both the mobile and desktop versions of the messenger. They are located at the bottom of the posts feed. The only available ad format is text with a button. Clicking on the button will take the user to the channel, bot or Telegram post - depending on the ad's settings.

The minimum budget in Telegram Ads is much larger than in other advertising platforms. If you apply directly to Telegram, you'll need a minimum of 2 million euros. 1 million euros will be retained by Telegram Ads as a deposit, and 1 million euros can be used to run ads. The deposit will be refunded if you spend 10 million euros on advertising in a year.

How to Run Telegram Ads

To start using the platform directly, you need to log in to the Telegram Ad Platform using your phone number. The system will ask you to fill in the fields with information about your organization, after which you can apply to connect to the platform.

Because of the high entry threshold, large and medium-sized businesses more often resort to Telegram advertising. But small businesses also run it — the minimum budget can be stretched over a year.

To start advertising in Telegram Ads, you need to write the text of the ad, set the rate and select channels.

An ad consists of a headline, text and a button:

  • Title (the name of the channel with an active link to it).
  • The text can be up to 160 characters long.
  • The button can lead to the channel, to a bot or to a post in the channel.
  • Pictures, gifs and videos cannot be attached. But you can use emoji in your ads.

Telegram Ads has some rules that you need to keep in mind. For example, you can't use numbered lists and a large number of emoji in the text of your ad - otherwise it won't pass moderation.

Advertising in Telegram Ads is paid using the CPM model. When setting up, you need to specify the bid. This is the price you are willing to pay for 1000 impressions. The minimum bid is 2 euros.

The platform has an automatic auction of the first price. This means that advertisers compete for ad impressions: the higher the bid, the higher the probability that your ad will be shown.

You can show ads in channels selected automatically or manually, target them to subscribers of your own channel or by user interests. You can also customize exceptions. Specify topics or channels in which you don't want to show ads. Here's how targeting works:

  • When setting up automatically, you need to set a topic. For example, travel, technology, marketing. The platform will select the channels itself. You won't be able to see the list of channels on the site itself.
  • When manually setting up, you can select certain places. Give links to the channels in which you want to show the ad. For one ad can be specified no more than 100 channels, taking into account the exceptions.
  • When targeting user interests, you can set the country, region, or city, as well as the interests themselves. The platform determines them by user subscriptions.
  • Recall: when targeting channels and topics, ads are shown in channels with more than 1000 subscribers. If during an advertising campaign in any of the channels the number of subscribers becomes less than 1,000, advertising in it will automatically stop.

Advertisements are published in channels without the authors' consent. They don't receive money for this. Other people's ads may appear in your channel too. To avoid this, you can set up advertising on your channel and set a high bid. This way, you will outbid your competitor.

How Analytics Is Organized in Telegram Ads

The analytics section is quite simple. You can track the performance of ads at the level of an account and an individual ad.

At the Account Level

In the general statistics, you can see 10 indicators for each ad. Current status, launch date, views and subscriptions, budget spent and other parameters. In this section you can see all campaigns launched in the cabinet - even those that are no longer active. There is no data visualization and no possibility to download a report.

At the Ad Level

You can view the results for each ad in the Info section. The section will show the same metrics as the general graph: views and subscriptions. You can download the report.