Telegram Ads in Italy: the Decreto Dignità, CONSOB Rules and Measured CPMs (2026)

Every country guide I write lately opens the same way: someone read that “Telegram Ads doesn’t work in Europe” and assumed Italy was on a blocklist. It isn’t. Italy delivers like any other market — our TON accounts served 1.8M Italy-targeted impressions between August and October 2026. The real question in Italy isn’t can you reach it — it’s what you’re allowed to say once you’re in, because Italy bans gambling advertising outright and reserves crypto services for authorised providers.

Can you run Telegram Ads in Italy?

Yes. Italy is one of the 229 country options in the ad form, on both account types. Our Telegram Ads in Europe breakdown covers the rest of the continent.

Through Adsly you reach an Italian audience with a Euro account; since 22 August 2026 TON accounts target in the same way — country, language, topics, devices, or specific channels — but do less:

• Euro account (our recommendation). A Telegram Ads account on our EU entity, opened as a World account: its campaigns can target Italy or any other available country, or the Italian language to reach Italian speakers in other countries. It takes a website as the destination as well as channels, bots and Mini Apps, plus in-stream video, a custom button and billing in euro. €500 minimum ad budget, opens in 2 business days.
• TON account. It links to Telegram destinations only: channels, bots and Mini Apps. Italy is not among the four countries where TON-funded ads are not served.

Both need no KYC on you and are paid in any crypto, and with both you get the account itself on ads.telegram.org as well as the Pro Panel.

Where the constraint sits in Italy

In Italy delivery is not the problem; the constraint sits in the legal and creative layer. Get the Decreto Dignità or the CONSOB side wrong and you lose the campaign to a rejection or to the law, not to a delivery gap.

Who regulates advertising in Italy — ADM, CONSOB and the Decreto Dignità?

This is the part every “just run ads in Italy” page skips. Italy has two regulators you need to know by name, one law that reshaped the entire gambling category, and a third authority that enforces it.

ADM — Agenzia delle Dogane e dei Monopoli is the gambling authority: it oversees the games sector for the State and manages the market of concessions (ADM). Legal gambling in Italy runs under an ADM concession — no concession, no legal Italian market.

The Decreto Dignità (Dignity Decree, 2018) is the constraint that catches everyone by surprise. Article 9 of Decree-Law 87/2018, converted by Law 96/2018, prohibits “any form of advertising, even indirect, relating to games or bets with cash winnings and to gambling, however carried out and on any medium” — and the list of media expressly includes digital channels and social media. Since 1 January 2019 the ban also covers sponsorships. The sanction falls on the advertiser, on the owner of the medium or site and on the event organiser: 20% of the value of the sponsorship or advertising, and never less than €50,000 per violation. The authority that enforces it is AGCOM, which published guidelines on how the article applies (Normattiva, text in force; AGCOM, resolution 132/19/CONS).

For a Telegram advertiser this means something plain: gambling advertising into Italy is banned, a concession does not lift the ban, and Telegram is not a loophole in Italian law. A Senate committee voted in March 2025 to ask for the ban to be revisited (Il Post); on 3 October 2026 the text in force is unchanged.

Telegram’s own rule points the same way. The ad guidelines prohibit gambling ads: §5.6 says ads must not promote “online or offline gambling, gaming, or casino-based activities involving real money, prizes, or goods of any value” (guidelines). With us gambling runs in two formats only — an official gambling account, ad budget from €25,000, or a test launch on our infrastructure, ad budget from €5,000 — described in the gambling policy guide. Neither format changes Italian law.

CONSOB — Commissione Nazionale per le Società e la Borsa is the financial-markets authority. Two facts matter in 2026:

• Crypto: only authorised providers since 1 July 2026. The MiCA transition period for providers that had operated under national regimes ended on that date. Crypto-asset services for European clients are reserved for providers authorised under MiCA; on 30 June 2026 Italy had 8 authorised providers plus one bank that had notified, and operators without an authorisation in at least one EU country were told to cease activity (CONSOB and Banca d’Italia, 30 June 2026).
• Unauthorised sites are blocked. CONSOB orders internet providers to black out sites that offer financial or crypto-asset services without authorisation: 1,822 sites since July 2019, 235 of them crypto-related (CONSOB, 17 September 2026).

If your offer is trading-related, name your authorisation clearly and keep the risk disclosure where the reader sees it. Which authorisation an offer needs for Italy is a question for Italian counsel, not for an ad platform.

What does Telegram Ads cost in Italy?

Our Italy-targeted campaigns ran on TON accounts: 0.43 TON per thousand impressions at 2.36% CTR across 1.8M impressions on 7 accounts (22 August–3 October 2026). Next to the UK and Germany at 0.27 TON and France at 0.24 TON, that is still the cheap end of our TON table. These are TON prices, not euros; we have no Euro-account measurement for Italy yet.

We do not publish a per-niche price for Italy: 1.8M impressions on 7 accounts is not enough to separate one niche from another honestly. Tables for every measured country are in the CPM by country guide.

For scale: across Adsly cabinets we’ve run 500,000+ campaigns and 1B+ impressions through 370+ cabinets — the CPM figures above are what we actually measured, not a 2024 benchmark table someone copied.

What works — and what to avoid — when Italians see your ad?

We have no measured comparison of niches in Italy, so this is advice, not data.

Works without a licence layer:

• Mainstream consumer, SaaS and B2B — no special constraints beyond Telegram’s own guidelines.
• Crypto and Web3 education and tools that are not themselves a crypto-asset service — analytics, self-custody software, learning products.
• Fintech and trading by authorised providers, where you name the authorisation and show the risk warning up front.

Avoid:

• Gambling creative aimed at Italian residents. The Decreto Dignità bans it on any medium, and Telegram’s guidelines prohibit it as well.
• Crypto-asset services without a MiCA authorisation, and unauthorised forex/CFD. CONSOB has such sites blocked.
• Pharma and CBD. We don’t touch either — off the menu regardless of geo.
• Aggressive “bonus” copy and absolute claims. Telegram’s guidelines prohibit exaggerated comparisons and unrealistic statements.

Write in Italian: Telegram’s guidelines say the language of the targeted channel should match the language of the ad and of the destination.

How does Adsly set up an Italy campaign?

The mechanics are the same 2-business-day flow as any Adsly account:

1. Open a Euro account on our EU entity: it takes channels, bots and Mini Apps as well as a website as the destination, in-stream video and billing in euro. Our Italy measurement comes from TON accounts. Minimum ad budgets: €500 for regular niches, €1,000 for crypto and for stocks and investing, €5,000 for nutra, adult and dating, and binary options; gambling runs only in the two formats described above.
2. The account opens in 2 business days (4 for nutra, adult and dating, and binary options). No pre-moderation of your channel, bot or site — we don’t send your assets to Telegram for approval and wait on a verdict. Once the account is open, the team agrees the launch plan with you.
3. Build Italian-language creative. Opening an account does not approve any ad: Telegram moderates each ad separately. Over 98% of the 13,199 campaigns we measured in September 2026 had a decision within three hours, and 95.6% of reviewed ads on Euro accounts and 86.8% on TON accounts were finally approved. For frequency, set Views per User to 1–2 to start (the form allows 1 to 4); we have no hour-of-day data for Italy, so read the hourly analytics of your own campaigns.
4. Pay in any crypto. No KYC on you.

We don’t promise you an exemption from Italian gambling law, and anyone who does is selling you a problem. We also do not verify licences or review an offer against Italian law: that responsibility stays with the advertiser. What we provide is the account in 2 business days, access to it on ads.telegram.org and in the Pro Panel, and the tools to run it.

For everything about the account itself, message us at @adsly_pro. The ADM and CONSOB questions are for Italian counsel, before you fund anything.