What is telegram advertising, and which telegram ads platform is the official one?
Telegram advertising has one official home: the Telegram Ad Platform at ads.telegram.org. It shows sponsored messages of up to 160 characters, plus a button, at the bottom of public channels with at least 1,000 subscribers. Everything else sold as "telegram ads" is a post bought from a channel admin or an ad network inside bots.
The official telegram ads platform is self-serve. You sign in with a Telegram account, fund the balance, write the ad, pick where it should run and set a price per thousand views. The ad then waits for review, and once approved it appears under the latest posts of the channels you targeted. People who do not follow your channel see it, which is the point, and channel owners receive half of the revenue from ads shown in their channels, a share Telegram introduced on 31 March 2024 and pays out through Fragment.
So when someone asks "can i advertise on telegram", the honest answer has two parts. Yes, through the official telegram advertising platform, under its rules and its review. And yes, through the informal market, where admins sell posts and pins at prices they set themselves. The two behave very differently on cost, control and proof of delivery, and most campaigns we plan use both. The rest of this page takes them in order: routes, mechanics, cost, setup, review and the step most people skip, turning a click into a lead.
A quick vocabulary note, because search terms blur together. "Ads on telegram", "advertising on telegram" and "how to advertise on telegram ads" all point at the official platform when they mention a bid or a review. "How to advertise on telegram" without that context usually means any of the three routes below, and "telegram advertising cost" questions depend on which route you choose.
If your goal is reaching people who already know you rather than new audiences, an ad is the wrong tool, and sending one update to an audience that already joined your channel costs nothing per view.
Can you advertise on Telegram without the Ad Platform?
Yes. There are three paid routes: the official Ad Platform, buying posts directly from channel and group admins, and ad networks that place banners inside bots and Mini Apps. Each one sells a different thing: an auction impression, a placement in someone's feed, or a slot inside an app.
People who search "can you run ads on telegram" usually mean the first route, while people searching "advertise telegram group" or "advertise on telegram channels" are often looking at the second. The table lays them side by side.
| Route | What you buy | Who sets the price | Proof of delivery |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telegram Ad Platform (ads.telegram.org) | Sponsored messages of 160 characters under posts in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers | You, as a CPM bid, with a floor of 0.1 Gram | Views and clicks in the ads manager |
| Direct post or pin from an admin | A full post in a channel, or a pinned message in a group | The admin, per post or per pin | Only the post's view counter, which you cannot audit |
| Bot and Mini App ad networks | Banners, interstitials or rewarded slots inside bots and Mini Apps | The network, by CPM or CPC | The network's own dashboard |
Groups are the odd one out. Sponsored messages from the Ad Platform target channels, so to advertise in a group you deal with its admins: a pinned post, a mention in a weekly digest, or a sponsored slot in an event. Ask for the member count, the share of members who were active in the last week, and screenshots of earlier sponsored posts with their reactions. A group of 40,000 with a dozen messages a day is a different buy from a group of 40,000 that went quiet a year ago. For what a group's own settings allow before you even pay, which contacts a privacy setting lets you add to a group explains the limits admins work under.
Direct buys also carry a quality risk that the official route does not. Channel view counts can be inflated, and admins rarely let you see where the views came from. The Ad Platform's own guidelines bar ads for services that inflate followers or views, which tells you how common the problem is.
How do telegram ads work, from bid to impression?
Telegram ads work as a CPM auction. You set the most you will pay per 1,000 views and a total budget; when a targeted channel publishes, ads with higher bids win the slot under its posts. Your balance is charged for views, not clicks, until the budget runs out or you stop the ad.
That one paragraph answers both "how does telegram ads work" and "how telegram ads work", but three details change how you plan. First, the ad is text only: 160 characters including spaces, with one button, so the message has to make sense without an image. Second, targeting is set when you create the ad, by channel, topic or language, and the targeting choice is locked after creation, so changing the audience means creating a new ad. Third, ads appear for users who do not have Telegram Premium; Premium subscribers do not see sponsored messages at all.
Each ad in the telegram ads manager carries one of five statuses. Knowing them saves a lot of support messages:
| Status | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| In Review | Telegram's moderators have not decided yet | Wait; editing the ad sends it back to the queue |
| Active | Approved and bidding for impressions | Watch views per day; raise the CPM if delivery is slow |
| On Hold | Approved but not running, usually because the balance or budget ran out | Add funds or raise the budget |
| Stopped | You paused it | Restart when ready; edits to the text send it back to review |
| Declined | Rejected under the ad guidelines | Read the reason, fix the ad or the destination, submit again |
What the platform does not do matters as much. It has no pixel, no conversion tracking and no audience built from your customer list. It tells you views, clicks and spend. Anything after the click, sign-ups, sales, replies, is yours to measure, which is why the last section of this page is about the destination rather than the ad.
How much do telegram ads cost on each route?
On the official platform the floor is 0.1 Gram per 1,000 views, and Telegram states no minimum deposit for self-serve accounts. Through a euro reseller, published entry points start around €250 plus a commission of 20% or more. Direct posts cost whatever the admin quotes, so there is no single telegram ads price.
The currency needs a note. Telegram's ad balance is funded with the coin of the TON blockchain, which was called Toncoin until it was renamed Gram in June 2026, one to one. The Ad Platform's home page already says Gram, while its getting-started page still says the minimum CPM is 0.1 Toncoin. They are the same coin. Channel owners who earned Telegram Stars can also spend them on ads at a 30% discount, according to Telegram's Stars documentation.
| Route | Entry cost | Unit price | Extra charges |
|---|---|---|---|
| Self-serve Ad Platform, paid in Gram | No stated minimum deposit | CPM bid, floor 0.1 Gram | Wallet and exchange fees; balance is non-refundable |
| Ad Platform through a euro reseller | About €250 at eLama (top-up guide, February 2026) | The same CPM auction | 20% commission, 25% for education and 30% for crypto, plus VAT |
| Direct euro access from Telegram | €2 million, half held as a deposit (as reported by eLama) | The same CPM auction | None published |
| Ads paid with earned Stars | Stars already in a channel's balance | The same CPM auction | 30% discount on the Stars rate |
| Direct post or pin | One post | Fixed per post, set by the admin | Often a surcharge to keep the post up longer |
To answer "how much do telegram ads cost" for a real plan, start from impressions. A test budget of 50 Gram at a CPM of 0.5 Gram buys 100,000 views. If 1% of viewers click, that is 1,000 visits to your channel or bot. Change the CPM or the click rate and the numbers move in a straight line, which makes the official route the easiest to budget. The same sum spent on one direct post buys whatever that post's real audience happens to be.
People often ask for the best cpm for telegram ads as if there were a magic number. There is not. The floor only guarantees that your ad is allowed to compete; whether it wins depends on who else targets the same channels. We start new ads a little above the floor, check views after a day, and raise the bid in small steps until delivery is steady. Popular crypto and finance channels clear at much higher prices than niche hobby channels, so how much telegram ads cost depends more on where you aim than on the platform itself.
Two rules from the Ad Platform's Terms of Service belong in every budget: money in the balance cannot be withdrawn, transferred or refunded (section 4.3), and a balance left untouched for three years is forfeited (section 4.4). Top up in amounts you expect to spend. For the wider budget question across paid and organic channels, the seven outreach types and the rule each one answers to shows where ads fit next to the rest.
How to create telegram ads account and launch the first ad
Sign in at ads.telegram.org with your Telegram account, fund the balance in Gram through Fragment or open the account through a reseller, then create the ad: text, button, destination, targeting, CPM and budget. Submit it for review. Activation happens when the ad is approved and the balance covers the bid.
The steps below are how to create telegram ads from an empty account, and they also answer "how to buy telegram ads" and "how to do telegram ads" in practice:
- Prepare the destination first. The channel or bot the ad points to needs a profile photo, a description and at least one post from the last two weeks. Do this before anything else, because a bare destination is the most common reason for a decline. Short bio examples that fit Telegram's 70-character limit help with the description.
- Open the telegram ads account. Log in at ads.telegram.org with the Telegram account that should own the ads. Use a company number your team controls, with 2-Step Verification on, not a staff member's personal phone.
- Add funds. Pay in Gram from a TON wallet, or go through a reseller if you need euro invoices. Resellers open the account for you and handle documents.
- Write the ad. 160 characters including spaces, one button, written in the language of the channels you target. Say what the reader gets, not what you are.
- Pick targeting. Choose channels, topics or languages. Write the list down; you cannot change it after creation.
- Set CPM and budget. Start slightly above the floor and cap the daily spend for the first week.
- Submit and watch. The ad goes to In Review. Once approved and funded, it turns Active.
Teams searching how to activate telegram ads are usually stuck on step 3 or step 7: either the balance does not cover the bid, so the ad sits On Hold, or the review has not finished. If you are wondering how to create ads on telegram for a client, give the client ownership of the ads account from day one; an agency that owns the login also owns the non-refundable balance.
The ads account is a Telegram login like any other, so protect it the same way: one privacy and 2-Step Verification baseline for every team account covers the settings, and why a bought Telegram login key is never fully yours explains why the account should never come from a shop. The same discipline applies off Telegram. Campaigns that also run on Instagram fail quietly when the brand profile is locked mid-launch, and the official routes for getting a locked Instagram account back are worth bookmarking before you spend.
How long does telegram ads review take, and why are ads declined?
Telegram publishes no review time. Its Terms of Service say it is not bound by any time frame when reviewing ads (section 3.2(a)). Simple ads to well-kept channels are often approved within a day; ads in sensitive categories, or pointing to bare channels, can wait several days or be declined.
So the honest answer to "how long does telegram ads review take" is: plan for days, hope for hours. Submit at least three working days before a launch date. Editing an ad that is In Review restarts the wait, so get the text right before you submit. Telegram may also ask an advertiser for licences or legal documents, such as registration papers or tax numbers, and pause the account until they arrive (section 3.2(c) and (d)). Finance, gambling, crypto and health ads draw those requests most often.
Declines follow a pattern. In our campaigns the usual reasons are:
- The destination is not ready: no profile photo, no description, or no post in the two weeks before review.
- Language mismatch: the ad, the destination and the targeted channels must use the same language.
- Prohibited category: the guidelines list categories that cannot be advertised at all, including services that inflate followers or views and services that send unsolicited messages.
- Claims and formatting: exaggerated promises, all-caps words, or symbols added only to grab attention.
The prohibited-category rule matters for anyone in outreach. An ad that promises bulk messages to strangers is declined under the same guidelines that limit the accounts sending them. The two limits an account meets when it writes to people outside its contacts describes the account side, and why bulk sends from one personal account end in a limit describes the mechanics. Advertise the channel or the bot people join, never the sending itself.
How to generate leads on telegram from an ad click?
Send the click to a bot or a channel built to capture it, not to a bare website. A bot opened from an ad can ask one qualifying question, tag the source with a start parameter, and hand warm replies to a person. A channel turns the click into a subscriber you can reach again for free.
Where those subscribers end up living matters too. If you are deciding between a Telegram channel and a separate members space, who owns the member list on each online community platform compares the options before you pay to fill one.
Because the Ad Platform tells you only views and clicks, the destination has to do the measuring. Give each ad its own deep link with a start parameter, so the bot knows which ad brought each person. Ask one question that sorts buyers from browsers, budget, team size or timeline, and offer the next step in the same chat. People who press Start have opted in, so what a bot can send to the people who pressed Start becomes your follow-up channel, under rules Telegram documents.
A case from this year shows the gap between clicks and leads. A B2B software team came to us after spending on telegram advertising with every click going to their website. We saw a 1.4% click rate and almost no sign-ups, because readers were dropped out of Telegram onto a long form. We pointed the same ad at a bot that asked a single question and offered a demo slot, and connected the replies to one shared inbox for every account the team runs. Over the next four weeks the share of clicks that became booked calls rose from under 1 in 200 to about 1 in 25. The figures are from one client and are illustrative, not a promise.
After the first conversation the work is ordinary outreach, and the rest of our services cover it. Write a first message that reads like a person, keep a DM cadence the list will tolerate, and use comment triggers and the DM automation platforms allow on other networks to feed the same bot. When the list grows, how bulk messaging services handle consent, the risk attached to each bulk messaging route and the send limits a message sender has to respect keep the follow-up inside Telegram's rules.
How we plan a telegram advertising program around the ad
An ad is one week of attention; the program around it decides whether that week pays. How we plan cold outreach around reply rates and which outreach steps are safe to automate set the plan, and the ways to message someone on Telegram from an account you own keeps every reply on a login your team controls. If the channel you are advertising is new, what adding members to a group in bulk actually permits sets realistic expectations for growth outside ads. Before a launch, how a checker reads working, limited and frozen account results confirms the accounts answering leads are healthy. And for a token or product date, a launch calendar built on a channel, a group and an opt-in bot shows where sponsored messages fit in the weeks before and after.