Ads in Telegram Bots: How to Advertise Inside Bots (2026 Data)
You advertise inside Telegram bots through Telegram Ads itself: the ad appears as a bar above the chat of the bots you list, or of any bot your target audience opens. In Adsly Pro Panel 31,969 campaigns from 165 accounts ran in bots; on Euro accounts the median campaign paid €2.18 per thousand views, a click €0.211 and a bot start €0.342, cheaper than a start bought in channels (€0.711). Adsly, the official Telegram Ads partner, opens a Euro account with bot placements in 48 hours from €650.
Every time someone opens a chat with a bot, their Telegram app asks Telegram’s servers for an ad to show there. The translator, the VPN bot, the video downloader, the AI assistant people open several times a day: each can carry a sponsored bar above the chat, and advertisers buy that bar in the same Telegram Ads account they use for channels.
It is a shelf that keeps growing. Our Pro Panel tracks 551,607 campaigns run by 442 ad accounts, 1,285,233,150 impressions in total. Among them, 31,969 campaigns from 165 accounts ran inside chosen bots between 26 February 2025 and 18 October 2026 and collected 181,125,588 impressions. Another 5,898 campaigns from 40 accounts used the newer audience format inside bots. Below, measured on 19 October 2026: how the format works according to Telegram’s own documentation, what it costs on Euro, TON and Stars accounts, which bots advertisers pick, and the playbook we run.
Ads in Telegram bots: the short answer
- Format. A bar above the bot chat: a title with an “Ad” label, a short text and an optional thumbnail. A tap opens your link. No button, no image, no video.
- Two ways to buy. List the bots by username, or (since 15 September 2026) target an audience and let Telegram show the ad inside whichever bots those people open.
- Price on Euro accounts. €5.03 CPM across all spend, €2.18 for the median campaign, €0.211 per click, €0.342 per bot start.
- Cheaper results than channels. A Euro bot start bought inside bots cost €0.342, against €0.541 with audience targeting and €0.711 in chosen channels. A channel subscriber: €2.005 against €2.629 and €3.688.
- Growth. Bots took 2.8% of impressions in the second quarter of 2025 and 24.7% for campaigns created in October 2026.
- Who buys. VPN (13,245 campaigns), crypto (3,777) and AI tools (2,119).
- Euro. 9,966 campaigns from 42 Euro accounts ran in bots. The placement is in the Euro account.
How ads inside Telegram bots work
Telegram documents the mechanics in its client API. “Each time the user opens a channel or a chat with a bot, messages.getSponsoredMessages must be called to receive sponsored messages available for the channel or bot,” and the result is cached for five minutes. In bots the ad is displayed “above the chat, akin to an action bar” (Telegram API: sponsored messages).
The bar carries three things: a title, locally prefixed with a blue “Ad” label (or “Recommended”), the ad text, and, if the advertiser added the picture, a thumbnail in the right section of the bar. A tap opens the ad link. Telegram links (t.me and Telegram’s own domains) open directly in the app; any other address first shows a confirmation prompt. A view is counted once the whole ad text is on screen.
What a channel ad has and a bot ad lacks: the button and the media. When you choose bots in the Telegram Ads form, it offers only the text and the picture checkbox (form script). The text limit is the usual one: “The maximum length of the ad text is 160 characters including spaces” (Ad Policies, §1).
The bot’s owner shares in the money. Telegram’s Bot Platform page says developers can take part in revenue sharing from Telegram Ads and receive half of the revenue from ads that appear in the chat with their bot (Telegram Bot Features: Monetization; Channel and bot ad revenue).
Two ways to buy ads inside bots
The Telegram Ads form has four target types: users, channels, bots and search. Bots can be reached through two of them.
| Chosen bots | Audience shown inside bots (“Banner in Bot”) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where in the form | Target type “Bots” | Target type “Users”, bot placement |
| How you aim | List bots by username; the form suggests similar bots | Country, language, interests, channels people follow, device |
| Pick a specific bot | Yes | No |
| Country targeting | No country field in any chosen-bot campaign in our base (kod.ru also reported none): the bot’s audience is your geography | Yes |
| First ad in Pro Panel | 26 February 2025 | 15 September 2026 |
| Campaigns (accounts) | 31,969 (165) | 5,898 (40) |
| Euro CPM / CTR | €5.03 / 2.39% | €1.12 / 0.97% |
The audience format was reported on 15 September 2026 by Sostav and kod.ru, both citing MTS AdTech: ads run in bots with at least 1,000 monthly users, individual bots cannot be selected, and the creative is text, a logo and custom emoji without photos or video. ppc.world (16 September 2026) put the price floor at the audience-targeting level, from €0.60. Our data agrees: the cheapest tenth of Euro campaigns in this format ran at €0.60 CPM.
When ads in bots started and how fast they grow
The first bot-placement ads in Pro Panel date from 26 February 2025 on a Stars account, 10 April 2025 on TON and 14 May 2025 on Euro. That last date is the day kod.ru reported, citing MTS AdTech, that ads inside chatbots had opened in the euro ad account. Telegram itself documents bots in its sponsored-messages API; we found no telegram.org blog post announcing the placement.
Since then the bot share has climbed almost every quarter:
| Quarter of ad creation | Accounts that ran ads in bots | All active accounts | Share of impressions shown in bots |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 Q2 | 5 | 19 | 2.8% |
| 2025 Q3 | 6 | 28 | 7.3% |
| 2025 Q4 | 15 | 67 | 10.9% |
| 2026 Q1 | 55 | 151 | 8.9% |
| 2026 Q2 | 81 | 258 | 12.8% |
| 2026 Q3 | 83 | 219 | 18.0% |
| 2026 Q4 (1–19 October) | 26 | 84 | 24.7% |
Method: campaigns grouped by the date the ad was created; impressions are lifetime counters; chosen bots and the audience format together, all account types. Through 2026 roughly a third of the active accounts in Pro Panel bought impressions in bots each quarter (31–38%), and in October about one impression in four went there.
What ads in bots cost on Euro, TON and Stars accounts
Only campaigns that spent money, each currency kept apart. Click-based figures leave out campaigns reporting more clicks than views or a CTR above 25%; CPM counts every paid impression. Euro chosen-bot ads are dated 14 May 2025 – 15 October 2026, the audience format 15 September – 7 October 2026. Measured in Adsly Pro Panel.
| Account | Placement | Campaigns (accounts) | Impressions | CPM | CTR | Cost per click |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Euro | Chosen bots | 7,030 (36) | 6,449,751 | €5.03 | 2.39% | €0.211 |
| Euro | Audience inside bots | 939 (9) | 708,913 | €1.12 | 0.97% | €0.116 |
| TON | Chosen bots | 8,352 (96) | 168,305,902 | 0.73 TON | 2.69% | 0.027 TON |
| TON | Audience inside bots | 1,584 (27) | 5,253,585 | 0.34 TON | 1.80% | 0.018 TON |
| Stars | Chosen bots | 914 (7) | 6,369,935 | 337.84 Stars | 3.37% | 10.03 Stars |
| Stars | Audience inside bots | 369 (2) | 75,458 | 101.08 Stars | 1.15% | 8.76 Stars |
Stars accounts pay in Telegram Stars, which a bot’s owner can spend on ads for that bot; Telegram counts each Star as 0.02 USD of advertising credit (Bot Developer Terms, §6.2.3). One Stars account delivered 88.2% of the Stars impressions in bots, so read that row as one advertiser’s history. TON-currency accounts make up most of what Pro Panel tracks, so their rows are here as market data; the accounts Adsly opens are Euro.
Bots vs channels vs audience vs search
Every placement side by side, Euro accounts first, TON-currency accounts second. Declined is the share of all campaigns in the placement (9,966 in bots, 55,060 in channels, 72,352 audience, 2,594 search).
| Euro placement | Campaigns with spend (accounts) | CPM | CTR | Cost per click | Declined |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chosen bots | 7,030 (36) | €5.03 | 2.39% | €0.211 | 3.2% |
| Audience inside bots | 939 (9) | €1.12 | 0.97% | €0.116 | 0.0% |
| Chosen channels | 48,009 (78) | €4.35 | 1.09% | €0.398 | 3.2% |
| Audience, shown in channels | 63,944 (96) | €2.36 | 0.71% | €0.335 | 3.2% |
| Search | 431 (22) | €27.23 | 7.07% | €0.320 | 3.9% |
| TON placement | Campaigns with spend (accounts) | CPM | CTR | Cost per click | Declined |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chosen bots | 8,352 (96) | 0.73 | 2.69% | 0.027 | 4.0% |
| Audience inside bots | 1,584 (27) | 0.34 | 1.80% | 0.018 | 0.2% |
| Chosen channels | 204,891 (249) | 0.96 | 1.94% | 0.049 | 6.7% |
| Audience, shown in channels | 35,367 (87) | 0.51 | 2.04% | 0.025 | 1.2% |
| Search | 3,171 (66) | 3.40 | 6.35% | 0.043 | 10.9% |
On Euro the bot bar is clicked 2.2 times as often as a post in a chosen channel and 3.4 times as often as an audience-targeted post, and the click costs about half of a channel click. The reason is the moment: a person in a bot is in the middle of a task, and a Telegram link in the bar opens without leaving the app. Search clicks even more, 7.07%, but at €27.23 per thousand and on small volume.
Cost per bot start and per subscriber from ads in bots
Telegram counts what happens after the click: a start for a bot, a join for a channel. These are not purchases or deposits.
| Euro placement | Cost per bot start | Clicks → start | Campaigns (accounts) | Cost per subscriber | Clicks → join | Campaigns (accounts) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chosen bots | €0.342 | 52.7% | 5,584 (27) | €2.005 | 9.8% | 1,188 (10) |
| Audience inside bots | €0.313 | 35.2% | 137 (3) | €1.808 | 6.6% | 693 (6) |
| Chosen channels | €0.711 | 43.0% | 6,188 (32) | €2.629 | 16.6% | 16,153 (37) |
| Audience, shown in channels | €0.541 | 31.7% | 13,127 (35) | €3.688 | 10.7% | 19,479 (41) |
| Search | €0.644 | 28.8% | 120 (9) | €2.578 | 14.4% | 311 (13) |
| TON placement | Cost per bot start | Clicks → start | Campaigns (accounts) | Cost per subscriber | Clicks → join | Campaigns (accounts) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chosen bots | 0.169 | 11.5% | 5,338 (70) | 0.851 | 8.3% | 1,777 (34) |
| Audience inside bots | 0.113 | 10.5% | 1,485 (25) | 0.899 | 4.6% | 95 (1) |
| Chosen channels | 0.200 | 20.7% | 72,821 (120) | 0.410 | 11.6% | 83,423 (149) |
| Audience, shown in channels | 0.065 | 21.9% | 24,153 (53) | 0.974 | 7.7% | 9,292 (36) |
| Search | 0.288 | 26.5% | 1,792 (37) | 0.126 | 15.9% | 1,378 (35) |
On Euro accounts both bot placements gave the cheapest start and the cheapest subscriber of any placement. Bot users press Start out of habit: more than half of the Euro clicks on bot ads inside bots became starts. Joining a channel from a bot bar is a bigger step, 9.8% of clicks. On TON the order changes: audience targeting produced the cheapest start, chosen channels and search the cheapest subscribers. Which destination to promote in the first place is a separate question, covered in bot vs channel.
What advertisers promote inside bots
78.2% of bot-placement campaigns (25,015 of 31,969) advertised another bot. The rest went to channels, Mini Apps and personal or business profiles.
| Account | Promoted | Campaigns (accounts) | Declined |
|---|---|---|---|
| Euro | Bot | 8,245 (32) | 3.7% |
| Euro | Channel | 1,318 (11) | 0.1% |
| Euro | Mini App | 258 (3) | 0.0% |
| Euro | Personal or business profile | 145 (3) | 12.4% |
| TON | Bot | 6,533 (87) | 0.5% |
| TON | Channel | 2,999 (46) | 1.5% |
| TON | Mini App | 2,104 (16) | 18.3% |
| TON | Personal or business profile | 130 (5) | 4.6% |
| Stars | Bot | 10,237 (9) | 0.0% |
Two rows stand out. Mini App ads inside bots on TON accounts were declined 18.3% of the time, the worst row in the table; a Mini App launched from a bot bar costs 0.399 TON per launch. And external websites: in the audience format one Euro account ran 110 campaigns to its own site, while no chosen-bot campaign in our base linked out. Decline rates by niche are broken down in our moderation data.
Which niches buy ads in bots
Niche sets are keyword sets from the ad title or text, the same definitions as on our niche pages; AI tools and games are sets added for this page. One campaign can fall into two sets.
| Niche | All accounts: campaigns (accounts) | Euro: campaigns with spend (accounts) | Euro CPM | Euro CTR | Euro cost per click |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| VPN (title) | 13,245 (28) | 3,334 (17) | €4.35 | 3.77% | €0.114 |
| Crypto (text) | 3,777 (45) | 529 (8) | €5.79 | 2.20% | €0.263 |
| AI tools (text) | 2,119 (51) | 373 (18) | €8.42 | 2.20% | €0.384 |
| Trading, forex, signals (title) | 701 (39) | 79 (10) | €25.75 | 2.91% | €0.885 |
| Media and news (text) | 459 (19) | 112 (4) | €6.67 | 1.26% | €0.531 |
| Games (text) | 158 (21) | 28 (4) | €4.25 | 1.94% | €0.219 |
| Gambling (title) | 118 (18) | 39 (2) | €6.18 | 1.79% | €0.346 |
| Binary options (text) | 118 (19) | 15 (4) | €58.41 | 4.20% | €1.389 |
On TON accounts the same sets ran at: VPN 715 campaigns, 0.64 TON CPM, 1.26% CTR; crypto 1,619, 0.18 TON, 1.35%; AI tools 1,265, 1.04 TON, 2.98%; trading 293, 12.50 TON, 2.21%; gambling 58, 0.51 TON, 1.46%.
VPN is the bot placement’s home niche: 41.4% of all campaigns in bots. On Euro accounts 3,133 VPN campaigns promoting a bot paid €0.191 per start, and 60.0% of their clicks ended in a start. Trading and binary-options ads are the expensive end of the table.
Which bots advertisers choose
The 31,969 campaigns listed 9,134 different bots in 126,201 bot placements. Euro advertisers put one bot in each ad (98.6% of Euro campaigns), which gives every bot its own statistics; on TON 61.1% did, and a quarter of TON campaigns listed 16 bots or more. We grouped bots by keywords in their usernames. That identifies 44.2% of them; the rest carry brand names. We do not publish bot names.
| Bot category | Bots | Campaigns (accounts) | Euro one-bot campaigns | Euro CPM | Euro CTR | Euro cost per click |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Crypto, trading and earning | 1,123 | 5,800 (107) | 410 | €6.88 | 2.01% | €0.342 |
| VPN and proxy | 673 | 14,211 (48) | 3,379 | €4.59 | 3.84% | €0.118 |
| Downloaders, video, films | 444 | 1,425 (63) | 55 | €1.45 | 2.68% | €0.054 |
| AI assistants, image generators | 367 | 3,340 (90) | 398 | €5.52 | 1.89% | €0.293 |
| Games and clickers | 349 | 3,006 (81) | 120 | €2.07 | 1.46% | €0.142 |
| Tools and utilities | 340 | 2,451 (95) | 125 | €1.92 | 2.85% | €0.067 |
| Music | 168 | 758 (45) | 55 | €1.29 | 1.81% | €0.071 |
| Casino and betting | 161 | 1,452 (66) | 61 | €9.74 | 3.13% | €0.311 |
| Anonymous chat and dating | 154 | 951 (54) | 123 | €1.30 | 1.61% | €0.081 |
| Shopping, Stars, gifts | 118 | 1,060 (58) | 38 | €10.96 | 1.87% | €0.587 |
| Education and languages | 105 | 924 (52) | 105 | €5.14 | 2.31% | €0.222 |
| Brand names (not classified) | 5,094 | 12,577 (151) | 1,997 | €5.20 | 2.20% | €0.236 |
Price follows the audience’s wallet. Mass-utility bots, the downloaders, music finders, tools and anonymous chats, sell clicks at five to eight cents. Bots whose users move money, crypto and trading tools, cost €0.342 a click. VPN and proxy bots combine a fair price with the best CTR in the table, 3.84%, and they are the most bought category: 14,211 campaigns.
What to bid for ads in Telegram bots
Campaign CPM percentiles, campaigns with spend and at least 1,000 impressions:
| Account and placement | Campaigns (accounts) | 10th | 25th | Median | 75th | 90th |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Euro, chosen bots | 827 (35) | €1.15 | €1.40 | €2.18 | €5.20 | €11.20 |
| Euro, audience inside bots | 147 (8) | €0.60 | €1.01 | €1.03 | €1.03 | €1.50 |
| Euro, chosen channels | 4,619 (69) | €1.57 | €2.00 | €3.13 | €5.13 | €9.99 |
| Euro, audience in channels | 14,293 (86) | €1.00 | €1.28 | €1.50 | €2.03 | €4.29 |
| TON, chosen bots | 3,790 (82) | 0.10 | 0.13 | 0.20 | 0.48 | 1.55 |
| TON, audience inside bots | 335 (23) | 0.20 | 0.20 | 0.20 | 0.35 | 0.73 |
A typical Euro bot campaign pays less per thousand than a channel campaign (€2.18 against €3.13) and earns a higher median CTR (2.01% against 0.71%). The overall €5.03 is pulled up by a minority of expensive crypto and trading bots. kod.ru reported a €1 minimum CPM for bots in the euro ad account in May 2025; our tenth percentile sits at €1.15.
Playbook: how to advertise inside Telegram bots
- Sell something a bot user acts on at once. Another bot, a VPN, an AI tool, a utility, a Mini App. 78.2% of bot-placement campaigns promote a bot, and on Euro 52.7% of their clicks became starts.
- Choose bots by what they do, not by size. Match the category to your offer (VPN in VPN and downloader bots, AI tools in AI bots), then add the similar bots the form suggests. kod.ru reported in 2025 that it adds up to nine similar bots automatically.
- One bot per ad. That is how 98.6% of Euro campaigns are built. Each bot gets its own CTR and cost per start, and you stop the weak ones without touching the rest. Pro Panel builds one ad per bot from a whole list in one pass.
- Bid from the median. Start a chosen-bot campaign near €2.18, go to €5 for crypto and trading bots, and let AutoCPM in Pro Panel hold the bid at the level that keeps delivery going.
- Write for a one-line bar. The title is the name of what you promote (kod.ru, 2025), so the bot or channel name must say what it does. Keep the text short and plain: line breaks, bullet points and gimmicky emoji are not allowed (Ad Policies, §2).
- Test the thumbnail, don’t assume it. Within the same Euro accounts the picture raised CTR for 2 of 8 advertisers (median ratio 0.77) and did not raise CPM consistently (median ratio 0.92 across 8 Euro accounts, 1.10 across 16 TON accounts), although kod.ru reported a 30% CPM surcharge in 2025.
- Show once per person. 8,205 of 8,839 Euro bot campaigns with a frequency setting showed the ad once per user.
- Tag every bot. Telegram allows start parameters in bot links (§3). Give each ad its own and count paying users in your bot.
- Keep the destination clean. A profile image and description (§4.1), a bot that answers on mobile and desktop (§4.2), and no “mostly noninteractive bots designed to redirect elsewhere” (§4.3).
- Run the audience format next to chosen bots. On Euro it was the cheapest bot placement: €1.12 CPM and €0.313 per start.
Advertise in Telegram bots from a Euro account
Bot placements are in the Euro account: 9,966 chosen-bot campaigns from 42 Euro accounts and 1,255 audience-format campaigns from 10 more ran in Pro Panel. A Euro account adds what self-serve Telegram Ads does not give you. The self-serve platform states that “Links to external sites are not allowed” (ads.telegram.org); a Euro account links to your own site or app as well as to bots, channels and Mini Apps. It reaches Russia and Ukraine (1,253 of the 1,255 Euro audience-format campaigns in our base targeted Russia), and every Euro account is World: you pick the countries in each campaign.
Adsly is the official Telegram Ads partner. We open a Euro account in 48 hours, with no KYC, from €650, of which €500 goes to your ad balance. Every account comes with Pro Panel, the strongest panel for Telegram Ads: one ad per bot built from a list in one pass, AutoCPM, rules and re-creation of declined ads. If you would rather hand the campaigns over, our managed service runs them.
FAQ
Can you advertise inside Telegram bots?
Yes. Telegram Ads shows sponsored messages in bots as a bar above the chat. You either list bots by username or target an audience and let Telegram show the ad in the bots those people use. In Adsly Pro Panel 31,969 campaigns from 165 accounts ran in chosen bots, 9,966 of them on Euro accounts.
How much do ads in Telegram bots cost?
On Euro accounts the median campaign paid €2.18 per thousand views, a click cost €0.211 and a bot start €0.342. The audience format inside bots ran at €1.12 CPM. Crypto and trading bots cost more: the 75th percentile is €5.20.
Can I choose which bots show my ad?
With the “Bots” target type, yes: you add bots by username and the form suggests similar ones. With audience targeting inside bots you cannot pick bots; Telegram shows the ad in bots with at least 1,000 monthly users that your audience opens, according to MTS AdTech as reported by Sostav and kod.ru.
Do bot owners earn money from ads in their bots?
Yes. Telegram’s Bot Platform page says developers receive half of the revenue from Telegram Ads that appear in the chat with their bot, and the Channel and bot ad revenue page in Telegram’s API documentation describes how owners view statistics and withdraw it.
Can an ad inside a bot link to my website?
Not from a self-serve account, which allows only Telegram links. A Euro account can link to an external site; in our base one Euro advertiser ran 110 audience-format campaigns inside bots to its own website. Your site then opens after Telegram’s confirmation prompt.
Can ads in bots have an image or video?
No. A bot ad is a title, a text of up to 160 characters and an optional thumbnail of the promoted bot or channel. Images, video and the button are channel-ad features. Telegram’s documentation and the ad form both show this.
Is advertising in bots the same as promoting my bot?
No. Advertising in bots is where the ad is shown; promoting a bot is where it leads. You can promote a bot from channel ads or a channel from bot ads. Destination economics are in our bot vs channel guide, and the full targeting form in the targeting guide.
Sources
- Telegram API: Sponsored messages (display in bots, views, clicks, revenue reference)
- Telegram API: Channel and bot ad revenue
- Telegram: Bot Features, Monetization
- Telegram: Bot Developer Terms of Service, §6.2.3 Advertising with Stars
- Telegram Ads: Ad Platform Explained and Ad Policies and Guidelines
- Telegram Ads ad form script: telegram.org/js/promote.js (fields shown for bots and for the bot placement of audience ads)
- kod.ru, 14 May 2025: ads inside bots in the euro ad account; kod.ru, 15 September 2026: Banner in Bot
- Sostav, 15 September 2026: audience targeting inside bots; ppc.world, 16 September 2026: Banner in Bot
- Adsly Pro Panel: 31,969 chosen-bot campaigns (165 accounts, 26 February 2025 – 18 October 2026) and 5,898 audience-format campaigns (40 accounts, from 15 September 2026), read-only queries on 19 October 2026; niche sets as in our landing statistics script
To advertise inside Telegram bots from a Euro account, write to @adsly_pro or open your account at /cabinet/.
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