Telegram Ads Strategy for 2026: What Changed and What to Decide First
A Telegram Ads strategy for 2026 is five decisions made in order. First the account type: since 22 August 2026 Euro, TON and Stars share one targeting form, so choose by delivery, destinations and moderation — a Euro World account covers every available country, Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine included, website links as well as Telegram destinations, and human escalation; Stars only if your channel earns Stars. Second the country, which moves price most: on our Euro accounts CPM runs from €0.20 in Uzbekistan to €2.92 in Turkey. Third the destination: a click cost €0.038 to a Mini App and €0.355 to a channel. Fourth targeting, people or places. Fifth creative inside Telegram's 160-character rules. Then test in small batches, track conversions past the click, and add automation rules as campaigns multiply.
What changed in 2026
Three changes make most older advice about Telegram Ads out of date, and each one moves a decision you have to make.
One targeting form. Until August 2026 audience targeting was a Euro feature, and TON accounts could only name channels and bots. Since 22 August 2026 TON and Stars accounts use the same form as Euro: countries (229 options), languages (71), topics (41), devices, or specific channels, bots and search. The account type no longer decides who you can reach.
Stars is not a third option for everyone. Only channel and bot owners can spend Stars, and only the Stars their own channel or bot earned. If your channel earns none, take a Euro account — the one type that covers every destination and every available country.
Two myths retired by measurement. “Euro moderation takes 12 to 48 hours”: over 98% of the 13,199 campaigns we timed in September 2026 had a decision within three hours, on Stars, TON and Euro alike. “Euro is the strict one”: the share of reviewed ads that end up approved is 95.6% on Euro and 86.8% on TON.
The scale is the same as before: Telegram’s own ad platform page counts “1 billion Telegram users” generating “1 trillion views in public broadcast channels” every month.
Decision 1: the account type
Choose the account for where it delivers, what it can link to and how moderation works — not for targeting.
| Euro | TON | Stars | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who can use it | Opened through a partner such as Adsly | Self-serve, or opened through Adsly | Channel and bot owners spending Stars their channel earned |
| Where it delivers | Every available country (World account); you pick the countries per campaign | Not served in Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine | — |
| Where the ad can lead | Channels, bots, Mini Apps and external websites | Telegram destinations only: channels, bots, Mini Apps | The channel or bot that earned the Stars |
| Extras | In-stream video, custom button | — | — |
| If an ad is declined | A human can escalate it through Adsly | Automated review only | — |
| Reviewed ads approved | 95.6% | 86.8% | 99.9% |
| Our average CPM and CTR | €2.97 · 0.85% | 0.90 TON · 2.18% | 395 Stars · 3.08% |
The three CPMs are in three currencies: compare inside a column, never across. The Euro column is mostly Russia — our largest Euro market and one TON cannot serve — so its lower CTR says as much about that market as about the account type. Stars stands on a small base of accounts.
One Euro World account covers all of it: every available country, the four TON cannot serve included, and website destinations as well as Telegram ones. Every account opened through Adsly comes with access to the account itself on ads.telegram.org and to Pro Panel. The Stars vs TON vs Euro comparison has the detail.
Decision 2: the country
Nothing in the ad form moves the price as much as geography. Single-country campaigns on our Euro accounts, 3 October 2026:
| Country | CPM | CTR | Cost per click |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uzbekistan | €0.20 | 0.90% | €0.023 |
| India | €0.25 | 1.12% | €0.022 |
| UAE | €1.42 | 1.36% | €0.104 |
| Brazil | €2.22 | 1.64% | €0.136 |
| Russia | €2.68 | 0.65% | €0.415 |
| Turkey | €2.92 | 0.87% | €0.337 |
A hundred clicks cost about €2.20 in India and €41.50 in Russia. On TON accounts, priced in TON and not convertible into the table above: Britain and Germany 0.27 TON per thousand impressions, the USA 0.39, India 0.42, Saudi Arabia 1.21, the UAE 3.79. We have no Euro-account measurement for Western Europe or North America, so there is no euro price to quote there. The full tables are in the CPM by country guide.
Decision 3: the destination
What the ad promotes changes the click price several times over. Euro accounts, September 2026:
| Destination | Cost per click | CTR | Accounts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mini App | €0.038 | 4.00% | 6 |
| Bot | €0.223 | 2.36% | 37 |
| Website | €0.266 | 0.69% | 8 |
| Channel | €0.355 | 0.82% | 90 |
The Mini App row stands on six accounts; read it as a direction. And a cheap click is not a cheap customer: what a subscriber or a bot user is worth depends on your funnel, which is why tracking comes before scaling. Website links exist only on Euro accounts.
Decision 4: who or where
Every ad targets either people or places. People means users filtered by country, language, topic, device and the channels they follow. Places means specific channels, bots or search queries. Telegram enforces two rules here: when specific channels are targeted the language field must be empty, and targeting by topic requires exactly one language.
Start with the narrowest audience you can name — the channels your customers already read — and widen from there. The targeting strategies guide covers how to build that list.
Decision 5: the creative, inside the rules
Telegram’s ad guidelines set the frame: 160 characters including spaces, no more than one link in the text, no URL shorteners, no gimmicky capitals or emoji, and an ad language that matches the language of the targeted channel. Photo and video attached to a sponsored message work on every account type; the in-stream video format is Euro-only.
We have no measured CTR comparison between text and media ads to publish, so test both on your own audience rather than trusting a multiplier from a blog. What gets an ad through review the first time is in the moderation guide.
Test in small batches: a working routine
This is how we would run it — a working routine, not a measured law. Write several texts for one audience and change one thing at a time. Let each ad collect enough impressions before you judge it, and compare its CTR with your own account in the same country, not with a global figure: our averages are 0.85% on Euro, 2.18% on TON and 3.08% on Stars, and they differ a lot by country.
Telegram’s getting-started page notes that once an ad is created “its targeting parameters can’t be changed”, so every targeting variant is a new ad. In Adsly Pro Panel bulk creation builds every combination of texts, links and channels in one pass, and a split option makes one campaign per country, topic or device.
We publish no best hours or days: we have no hour-of-day performance data. Use hourly analytics on your own campaigns to find yours.
Track past the click
Telegram’s statistics stop at views, clicks and actions, and an action is a channel join or a bot start. To see leads and sales you need one of three things. For bots, start parameters in the link, which Telegram’s guidelines allow. For channels, a separate invite link per ad; Pro Panel creates one automatically for each ad once its bot is an admin of your channel. For everything else, postbacks from your tracker into Pro Panel, which puts leads, purchases and revenue next to each campaign and makes them usable in rules.
Automate when there is volume
On our TON accounts, those with 1,000 or more campaigns pay 0.69 TON per thousand impressions against 2.71 TON for accounts with fewer than ten, and 54–58% of accounts with 200 or more campaigns use automation rules against 4% of the smallest. That is a correlation, not a cause — large accounts are different advertisers in different countries — but it shows how scale is run on Telegram: many campaigns, managed by rules. The automation rules guide and the scaling guide pick up from here.
Want one place for all of it? Adsly Pro Panel connects Euro, TON and Stars accounts, with bulk creation, rules, hourly analytics and postback tracking. Start free — 3-day Pro trial → · See the platform →
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the best Telegram Ads strategy for 2026?
Decide in this order: account type, country, destination, targeting, creative. Then test in small batches, track conversions past the click and automate once you run dozens of campaigns. Country and destination move cost the most: €0.022 per click in India against €0.415 in Russia on our Euro accounts.
Should I use Stars, TON or Euro?
Euro: it covers Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, website links, in-stream video and human escalation of declined ads, and Telegram destinations everywhere else too. Stars only if your own channel or bot earns Stars. All three share one targeting form since 22 August 2026.
Do video ads perform better than text on Telegram?
We have no measured comparison to publish. Photo and video creative works on every account type and the in-stream video format is Euro-only; test media against text on your own audience.
How do I track conversions from Telegram Ads?
Telegram reports views, clicks and actions, meaning joins and bot starts. For leads and sales use bot start parameters, a separate invite link per ad, or postbacks from your tracker into Adsly Pro Panel, which shows leads, purchases and revenue per campaign.
How much budget do I need to start?
A Euro account through Adsly starts at an ad budget of €500. Crypto and stocks or investing start at €1,000, and gambling, nutra, adult or dating and binary options at €5,000.
What is the best time of day to run Telegram ads?
We do not know, and no universal answer exists in our data: we have no hour-of-day performance figures. Check hourly analytics on your own campaigns and decide from that.
