How to Promote a Crypto Airdrop: Airdrop Marketing Costs on Telegram (2026)

An airdrop is the one crypto campaign where the product is free, and that is exactly what makes it hard to market. Every free token attracts wallet farms that take it and leave. The goal is not the biggest sign-up number. It is real Telegram users in a funnel you can verify, bought at a price per participant you planned before launch.

Below: the funnel, the anti-Sybil checks that Telegram’s own developer tools make possible, what Telegram’s Ad Policies say (read on 19 October 2026), and numbers nobody else publishes: 4,935 airdrop campaigns measured in Adsly Pro Panel, with the cost of every channel join and bot start.

How to promote a crypto airdrop: the short answer

Promote an airdrop where the hunters already are, Telegram, and buy participants, not impressions.

• Build a three-step funnel: announcement channel, task bot or Mini App, claim page. Telegram Ads feeds the channel and the bot directly; a Euro account also links to the claim page on your own site.
• Plan per participant. On TON accounts, airdrop campaigns paid 0.059 TON per join or bot start over their lifetime and 0.275 TON from June to October 2026. On Euro accounts the closest benchmark is crypto: €0.883 per bot start, €1.046 per channel subscriber, €0.511 per click to a website.
• Verify participants inside Telegram: validate Mini App data, check membership through the Bot API, give every ad its own start parameter or invite link.
• Write an announcement, not a task-for-reward. Telegram’s Ad Policies ban “incentivized or automated clicks” and “you-just-won-X claims”. Written that way, airdrop ads pass: 0.14% declined against 4.8% for all campaigns.
• Launch through Adsly: a Euro account in 48 hours, no KYC, €650 to start with €500 on your ad balance, any crypto niche, and Pro Panel for bulk launches.

Airdrop marketing in numbers: 4,935 campaigns in Adsly Pro Panel

Pro Panel holds 551,607 campaigns on 442 accounts with 1,285,233,150 impressions (snapshot of 19 October 2026). Campaigns whose title, text or link names an airdrop: 4,935 on 62 accounts, created between 9 February 2024 and 16 October 2026.

Account type	Campaigns	Accounts	Impressions	CTR	Declined
TON	4,826	50	4,393,091	1.40%	6 (0.12%)
Euro	55	8	17,914	0.25%	1 (1.8%)
Stars	54	4	438	0.46%	0
All airdrop campaigns	4,935	62	4,411,443	1.40%	7 (0.14%)

Most of the Pro Panel base is TON-currency accounts, so we publish those measurements as market data in TON (the coin Telegram now calls Gram). Money per campaign with spend:

Account type	Campaigns with spend	Accounts	Spent	CPM	CTR	Cost per click	Joins and bot starts	Cost per participant	Clicks that became a participant
TON (2025-11-12 to 2026-10-16)	2,584	38	634 TON	0.14 TON	1.40%	0.010 TON	10,709	0.059 TON	17.4%
Euro (2024-02-09 to 2026-09-02)	33	6	€45	€2.50	0.25%	€0.994	not counted: links to websites	—	—

A 0.14 TON CPM sits just above Telegram’s floor: “The minimum CPM for a sponsored message is 0.1 Toncoin”. Airdrop buyers bid at the bottom and buy volume. One advertiser holds 54.3% of TON airdrop impressions on 1,098 campaigns, so the sections below split the average by destination and by period.

Cost per participant: channel, bot or Mini App

What the ad sends people to changes the price more than anything else. TON accounts, campaigns with spend, compared with all crypto-worded campaigns that use the same destination:

Destination	Campaigns	Accounts	Impressions	CPM	CTR	Cost per click	Participants	Cost per participant	Click → participant	All crypto, same destination
Channel (join)	1,973	11	3,600,004	0.140 TON	1.36%	0.0103 TON	9,071 subscribers	0.055 TON	18.6%	0.300 TON (27,523 campaigns)
Bot (start)	585	27	765,907	0.149 TON	1.62%	0.0092 TON	1,570 starts	0.072 TON	12.7%	0.103 TON (11,506 campaigns)
Mini App (launch)	26	4	27,180	0.548 TON	0.64%	0.085 TON	68 launches	0.219 TON	38.9%	0.100 TON (1,382 campaigns)

An airdrop channel subscriber cost about a fifth of an average crypto channel subscriber, and a bot start about 30% less than a crypto bot start. The word “airdrop” is a hook: people who hunt free tokens click and join at a lower price than people asked to trade. The Mini App row is small (26 campaigns, 4 accounts): it turns the most clicks into launches, 38.9%, but pays four times the CPM. Concentration is high in the bot row, where the largest account holds 87.1% of impressions; in the channel row it is 47.7%.

The Euro airdrop sample is thin, 33 campaigns with spend on 6 accounts, and for a clear reason: 43 of the 55 Euro airdrop campaigns linked straight to a website, where Telegram does not count a join or a start. Euro airdrop ads also reached Russia: 15 campaigns on 4 accounts targeted it alone. Euro budgets are planned from the crypto rows in the budget section.

The spring 2026 airdrop wave, and what a participant costs now

The 0.059 TON average is mostly one season. 2,411 of the 2,584 TON airdrop campaigns with spend, 93.3%, were created in April and May 2026:

Period created (TON accounts)	Campaigns with spend	Accounts	Impressions	CPM	CTR	Cost per participant
Before April 2026	36	7	139,917	0.218 TON	0.91%	0.123 TON
April–May 2026	2,411	9	4,072,552	0.120 TON	1.40%	0.048 TON
June–October 2026	137	26	180,622	0.630 TON	1.97%	0.275 TON

Since June, three times as many accounts run airdrop ads, each with smaller and more selective campaigns: 0.252 TON per channel subscriber (40 campaigns, 6 accounts) and 0.303 TON per bot start (90 campaigns, 20 accounts). The largest account holds 70.3% of those impressions. Plan with the recent price; the spring floor price is history.

Month created (2026)	Airdrop campaigns, any status	Accounts	With spend
January	13	2	0
February	70	4	13
March	973	8	21
April	2,894	9	1,945
May	591	9	472
June	6	3	6
July	42	7	27
August	150	17	87
September	95	8	26
October (1–16)	54	7	11

August 2026 brought the most advertisers in one month, 17 accounts: the month TON accounts in our panel started targeting by country (the first such campaigns date from 21–22 August 2026).

How airdrop teams buy Telegram Ads: wide channel lists, one view per user

The way airdrop advertisers set up campaigns is a lesson in itself. On TON accounts with spend:

• Channel lists, not countries. 2,424 of 2,584 campaigns (93.8%) targeted a list of channels, 105 ran inside bots, and only 37 targeted one country.
• Wide lists. The median campaign targeted 25 channels (a quarter used 10 or fewer, a quarter 30 or more, the largest 99). Together that is 58,419 placements across 39,715 different channels.
• Micro-budgets. The median campaign spent 0.046 TON for 305 impressions. Airdrop buying is thousands of small tests, then budget for the lists that deliver.
• One view per user. 2,508 campaigns showed the ad once per person and paid 0.056 TON per participant; 58 campaigns at two views per person paid 0.137 TON.

The spread between campaigns is wide, which is why pruning matters more than bidding:

Per campaign, TON, with spend	25th percentile	Median	75th percentile	90th percentile
CTR (2,540 campaigns)	0.00%	0.54%	1.82%	—
Clicks that became a participant (1,814 campaigns with clicks)	0.0%	12.5%	33.3%	—
Cost per participant (1,035 campaigns with at least one)	0.0115 TON	0.035 TON	0.090 TON	0.20 TON

779 of the 1,814 campaigns that got clicks recorded no join or start at all. That is the cost of testing wide lists, and the reason Pro Panel’s Bulk Create exists: it combines your texts, links and channels into every campaign variant in one pass, so the lists that waste money are visible after the first day.

Airdrop sub-niches compared: token launch, memecoin, wallet, exchange, NFT

Each campaign is counted once, with airdrop wording checked first. TON accounts, campaigns with spend; declined share on all campaigns of the sub-niche:

Sub-niche (TON)	Campaigns	Accounts	CPM	CTR	Cost per click	Cost per join or start	Declined
Airdrop	2,584	38	0.14 TON	1.40%	0.010 TON	0.059 TON	0.1%
Token launch, presale	969	14	0.93 TON	3.49%	0.027 TON	0.159 TON	0.3%
Memecoin	277	14	10.92 TON	5.89%	0.185 TON	0.652 TON	0.0%
Wallet	1,587	25	1.95 TON	3.30%	0.059 TON	0.245 TON	1.7%
Exchange	2,892	25	0.96 TON	1.86%	0.052 TON	0.231 TON	0.5%
NFT	145	26	1.66 TON	2.5%	0.066 TON	0.102 TON	1.2%
All crypto-worded	40,440	111	0.67 TON	2.11%	0.032 TON	0.239 TON	1.1%
All niches	254,510	266	0.83 TON	2.12%	0.038 TON	0.248 TON	4.8%

Sub-niche (Euro)	Campaigns	Accounts	CPM	CTR	Cost per click	Cost per join or start
Airdrop	33	6	€2.50	0.25%	€0.994	—
Token launch, presale	11	3	€0.53	1.56%	€0.034	€0.166
Mini App, tap-to-earn	63	5	€2.32	0.34%	€0.680	€4.371
Wallet	83	16	€5.63	1.76%	€0.323	€2.507
Exchange	97	15	€5.55	1.56%	€0.356	€0.947
NFT	190	18	€2.62	0.45%	€0.583	€3.062
All crypto-worded	4,667	36	€3.26	0.64%	€0.510	€3.243
All niches	120,350	112	€2.94	0.86%	€0.339	€2.600

On TON accounts an airdrop impression is the cheapest in crypto; a memecoin impression costs 78 times more. If your token launch has an airdrop, lead with it: the airdrop wording costs less and gets declined less often.

The airdrop funnel that works on Telegram

1. Announcement channel. Telegram requires promoted channels to have “both a profile image and a complete text in their ‘about’ or ‘description’ section”, and “Telegram channels must have at least one post published within the two weeks prior to review”. Post the rules, the timeline and the official links before the first ad goes live.
2. Task bot or Mini App. Bot links in ads “may include start parameters for the bot”. Telegram allows A-Z, a-z, 0-9, _ and - in a parameter “up to 64 characters long”, so give every ad its own. A Mini App receives its startapp value in the start_param field. Destination bots “must respond to commands properly on both mobile and desktop devices”.
3. Quest platform, if you use one. Galxe describes Galxe Quest as “a simple, no-code solution” connecting projects with users “through reward-based loyalty programs”, with “Sybil prevention credentials”. Zealy lets a community “require users to link their Telegram account before claiming quests”, and “each Telegram account can only be linked to one Zealy account”.
4. Claim page on your site. Self-serve accounts cannot link there: “Links to external sites are not allowed”. A Euro account through Adsly can. Two rules apply: websites “unavailable from targeted locations” are not allowed, so never target a country your claim page blocks; and websites that “automatically redirect users to a different webpage or domain” are banned.

Sybil farms and fake participants: how to count real people

Telegram Ads sells reach; proving that each participant is one real person is your funnel’s job. On the ad side, you set the CPM you pay Telegram per thousand views and see impressions, clicks and joins for every ad. You do not pay a channel admin per post on a promise. On the funnel side, Telegram’s developer documentation gives you the checks:

• Validate Mini App data on your server. Telegram’s docs warn: “Validate data from this field before using it on the bot’s server”. The check is an HMAC-SHA-256 signature with a secret key derived from your bot token, and the auth_date field lets you reject outdated data.
• Check membership with getChatMember before you credit a “join our channel” task. It “is only guaranteed to work for other users if the bot is an administrator in the chat”.
• Screen joins. An invite link with creates_join_request means “users joining the chat via the link need to be approved by chat administrators”. Your bot approves them with approveChatJoinRequest after its checks.
• Name every link. createChatInviteLink takes a name of “0-32 characters”, so joins can be counted per ad. Pro Panel’s Invitation Links do it automatically: with our bot as channel admin, every ad gets its own invite link.
• Use the Premium flag as one signal. The Mini App user object carries is_premium, “True, if this user is a Telegram Premium user”.

The number to optimise is cost per verified participant: spend divided by the people who passed your checks, ad by ad. When an ad’s joins grow and its verified participants do not, cut it.

What Telegram’s Ad Policies say about airdrop ads

Neither “airdrop” nor “crypto” appears in Telegram’s Ad Policies or its Ad Platform Terms of Service (read on 19 October 2026). Airdrop ads are judged by the general rules, and these are the ones they hit:

Rule	Telegram’s exact wording	What it means for an airdrop ad
1. Ad format	”The maximum length of the ad text is 160 characters including spaces.”	One hook, one call to action
2. Editorial	Not allowed: “Line breaks, bullet points, numbering lists” and “Intrusive, excessive or gimmicky use of emoji”	No emoji walls, no task lists in the ad
5.4 Deceptive	”Clickbait or similar unrealistic statements, including you-just-won-X claims”	No “You won 500 tokens”
5.7 Financial	”Get-rich-quick offers, pyramid schemes, multilevel marketing, including offers of investment with guaranteed return”	No dollar values, no guaranteed gains
5.11 Spam	”Incentivized or automated clicks, including requests to perform actions on websites or services, complete online surveys”	Do not pay for the click in the ad
5.11 Spam	”Social media growth manipulation, including encouraging growth of social media profiles”	No “follow and repost to earn” in the ad
5.6 Gambling	Ads must not promote activities “involving real money, prizes, or goods of any value”, lotteries included	No raffle mechanics
4.7 Language	”The language of the targeted channel should match the language of the ad and of the destination.”	A Spanish ad goes to Spanish channels and a Spanish bot

The practical rule: the ad announces the project, the product and who is eligible; the tasks live in the bot. Airdrop advertisers in our panel write it that way, and it shows: 7 declined out of 4,935. If an ad is declined anyway, a Euro account gives you a direct line to Telegram moderation; see also how to fix a declined ad.

Airdrop campaign timeline: pre-launch, live, claim

Phase	Goal	Destination	What to measure
Pre-launch, before the snapshot	Grow the announcement channel	Channel join	Cost per subscriber, subscribers still there after a week
Live, tasks open	Get verified participants	Task bot or Mini App	Cost per verified participant, per ad
Claim window	Bring eligible users to claim	Claim page (Euro account)	Clicks to the claim page, claims per ad
After the claim	Turn claimers into users of the product	Channel, bot or product site	Cost per active user of the product

Start each phase with wide channel lists and one view per user, cut the channels that deliver no participants after the first day, and move budget to the lists that convert. Telegram’s own rule is that “once your ad is created, its targeting parameters can’t be changed”, so keep variants ready: Pro Panel copies campaigns with new targeting in bulk.

Budget planning with our numbers

Euro accounts have no large airdrop sample, so plan from crypto-worded campaigns on Euro accounts with spend, by destination:

Destination (Euro, crypto)	Campaigns	Accounts	CPM	CTR	Cost per click	Cost per participant	What €500 buys	10,000 participants
Bot (start)	1,302	13	€3.75	1.23%	€0.306	€0.883	about 566 bot starts	about €8,830
Channel (join)	1,065	11	€6.44	1.93%	€0.335	€1.046	about 478 subscribers	about €10,460
Website, e.g. claim page	2,059	11	€2.25	0.44%	€0.511 per click	your site counts it	about 978 clicks	—

The largest account holds 52.0% of bot impressions, 54.0% of channel impressions and 89.6% of website impressions in these rows. Formula: budget = verified participants you want ÷ share of starters who pass your checks × cost per bot start. Example input, not a measurement: with half of starters passing, 5,000 verified participants take 10,000 bot starts, about €8,830. For prices by country across all niches, see Telegram Ads CPM by country.

Mistakes that burn airdrop budgets

• Putting a value in the ad. “Worth $200” reads as a guaranteed return under rule 5.7.
• Putting the task list in the ad. It is an incentivized click under 5.11, and line breaks are banned anyway.
• Targeting a country your claim page blocks. Rule 4.2 declines it.
• No per-ad attribution. Without start parameters or named invite links you cannot find the ads that bring farms.
• Counting joins, not verified participants.
• Planning with spring prices. 0.048 TON per participant was April–May 2026; June–October was 0.275 TON.
• An empty channel or a bot that fails on desktop. Rules 4.5 and 4.2.

Why airdrop teams launch through Adsly

The airdrop pattern in our data, thousands of small campaigns over tens of thousands of channels, then a claim page at the end, needs two things a self-serve account lacks: links outside Telegram and tools for volume. Adsly, the official Telegram Ads partner, gives you both:

1. A Euro account in 48 hours, no KYC, payment in any crypto, €650 to start with €500 on your ad balance. Every Euro account is World: every available country, chosen per campaign, Russia and Ukraine included.
2. Links to your claim page, landing or quest, as well as channels, bots and Mini Apps, for any crypto niche.
3. A direct line to Telegram moderation when an ad is declined.
4. Pro Panel, the strongest panel for Telegram Ads: Bulk Create, Invitation Links per ad, Auto CPM and rules.
5. Managed service if you want our team to run the campaigns.

For the account setup itself, see the Euro account for airdrops; for presales, the token launch guide; for quests inside Telegram, Mini App ads; and for every other channel, the best crypto ad networks of 2026.

FAQ

How much does it cost to promote an airdrop on Telegram?

Measured in Adsly Pro Panel: on TON accounts, 0.059 TON per join or bot start over 2,584 airdrop campaigns, and 0.275 TON per participant from June to October 2026. On Euro accounts, crypto campaigns pay €0.883 per bot start and €1.046 per channel subscriber. A Euro account through Adsly starts at €650, of which €500 is your ad budget.

Are airdrop ads allowed on Telegram Ads?

Yes. Telegram’s Ad Policies do not mention airdrops or crypto; the general rules apply. Avoid value claims, “you won” lines, task-for-reward copy and raffle mechanics. Only 7 of 4,935 airdrop campaigns in our panel were declined.

Channel, bot or Mini App: which is cheapest per participant?

On TON accounts the channel was cheapest: 0.055 TON per subscriber against 0.072 TON per bot start and 0.219 TON per Mini App launch. The bot is where you verify people, so most teams run both: the channel for reach, the bot for tasks.

How do I keep bots and Sybil farms out of my airdrop?

Validate Mini App initData on your server, check membership with getChatMember, approve joins through join-request links, and give every ad its own start parameter or named invite link. Then cut the ads whose participants fail your checks.

Can my Telegram ad link to the claim page on my website?

Not from a self-serve account: “Links to external sites are not allowed”. A Euro account through Adsly links to your claim page, landing or quest platform. Make sure the page opens in every country you target.

How many participants will €500 buy?

At the measured crypto rates on Euro accounts: about 566 bot starts, about 478 channel subscribers or about 978 clicks to a website.

Which countries can I target with an airdrop campaign?

Every Euro account is World: you choose countries per campaign from every available country, including Russia and Ukraine. Airdrop advertisers in our panel mostly target lists of channels instead of countries: 93.8% of TON airdrop campaigns did.

Sources

• Telegram Ad Policies and Guidelines, read on 19 October 2026
• Telegram Ad Platform: getting started (minimum CPM, links, targeting changes)
• Telegram Ad Platform Terms of Service
• Telegram Ads homepage (payment in Gram)
• Telegram Mini Apps documentation (initData validation, startapp, is_premium)
• Telegram Bot API (getChatMember, createChatInviteLink, approveChatJoinRequest)
• Telegram bot features: deep linking
• Galxe Quest and Zealy, read on 19 October 2026
• Adsly Pro Panel: 551,607 campaigns, 442 accounts, snapshot of 19 October 2026

Ready to launch your airdrop? Write to @adsly_pro or open a Euro account.