Telegram Mini App Ads vs Official Telegram Ads (2026)
Telegram Mini App ad networks and official Telegram Ads are two different products. Networks such as RichAds and PropellerAds place ads inside other developers' Mini Apps — RichAds says its Telegram ads "operate not in channels but in Mini Apps" and are independent from Telegram's ad policy. Official Telegram Ads are sponsored messages in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers, bought in an ad account on ads.telegram.org and reviewed by Telegram before they run. Telegram's guidelines prohibit gambling ads (§5.6); with Adsly gambling runs there in two formats only, an official gambling account from a €25,000 ad budget or a test launch on our infrastructure from €5,000. Across all niches, 95.6% of reviewed ads on our Euro accounts end up approved.
Open any gambling affiliate chat in 2026 and you will see the same pitch: “Official Telegram Ads won’t approve casino, so buy our Mini App traffic instead.” It comes from ad networks that sell placements inside Telegram Mini Apps. The first half of that sentence is closer to the truth than most answers to it admit — Telegram’s guidelines do prohibit gambling ads — and the second half skips what you are actually buying. Here is what each product is, in its seller’s own words, and what we have measured.
What’s the difference between mini-app ad networks and official Telegram Ads?
The phrase “Mini App ads” gets stretched over two products that have almost nothing in common.
Official Telegram Ads is Telegram’s own ad platform, described by Telegram as “a tool to create sponsored messages in public one-to-many channels with 1000+ subscribers” (ads.telegram.org/getting-started, read on 3 October 2026). You buy it through an ad account (Euro or TON), it is priced per thousand views, and each ad goes “In Review” with Telegram’s team before it is shown. In our accounts the ad form also offers bots and search as placements. Promoting a Mini App as a destination through this platform is covered in our Telegram Mini App advertising guide.
Mini App ad networks are independent ad networks. They do not sell Telegram’s platform: they place ads inside other developers’ Mini Apps through their own systems. RichAds states that its Telegram ads “operate not in channels but in Mini Apps (prioritising popular clickers), functioning more like in-page ads and being independent from the messenger’s ads policy” (RichAds, updated 11 September 2026). PropellerAds sells rewarded ads — shown “when a user taps an in-app element that unlocks an in-game reward” — and non-rewarded ads shown at pauses between screens (PropellerAds, 18 December 2025).
Same two words, different seller, different placement, different rulebook.
Do Telegram’s rules allow gambling ads?
No. §5.6 of Telegram’s ad guidelines says ads “must not promote online or offline gambling, gaming, or casino-based activities involving real money, prizes, or goods of any value”, and its examples name casinos, sports betting, lotteries, bingo, fantasy sports and tips, odds and forecasts (guidelines, read on 3 October 2026). There is no licensed-operator exception in the text. A network that tells you official Telegram Ads prohibits gambling is quoting the rulebook correctly.
What that pitch leaves out is what it offers instead. Those guidelines “apply to all ads displayed on the Telegram Ad Platform”; a network placement is not on that platform, and by RichAds’ own description its moderation policies are “independent from Telegram itself”. You are not getting an exception to Telegram’s rule, you are buying a different product.
With us gambling runs on Telegram Ads 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). The gambling policy guide goes through the wording of the rules and what each format lets you say.
Who sees a Mini App network ad?
This is the question that decides the comparison, and the networks answer part of it themselves.
RichAds says it collects this traffic “primarily … from clicker games”. PropellerAds reports that iGaming “takes the largest share of TMA impressions (22.37%)” on its own Mini App inventory in 2025, ahead of Finance at 19.67% — the mix of advertisers buying that network’s placements, not a share of Telegram Ads or of Mini Apps as a whole. The same report puts click-through rates on its Mini App formats at “20–40% on average”, and describes the rewarded format as one the user opens to receive coins, hints or extra attempts.
Read those two facts together. A click given in exchange for an in-game reward is a different event from a click by someone reading a channel, so a conversion rate measured on one tells you nothing about the other. On our own base we leave out campaigns with a click-through rate above 25% when we compute averages: the result is 1.88% across all campaigns and 3.59% across gambling campaigns (3 October 2026).
Neither the networks nor we publish a deposit rate. Ask any seller for the event definition and for postback-verified deposits before you compare prices.
Official Telegram Ads vs mini-app networks: side by side
| Official Telegram Ads (Euro or TON account) | Mini App ad networks | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Telegram’s own platform: sponsored messages in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers | Independent networks placing ads inside other developers’ Mini Apps |
| Where you buy | An ad account on ads.telegram.org | The network’s own advertiser platform |
| Who reviews the ad | Telegram, before the ad is shown | The network, under its own policy |
| Gambling | Prohibited by guidelines §5.6; with Adsly, two formats only | Sold as a vertical: 22.37% of impressions on PropellerAds’ inventory in 2025 |
| Ad format | Text of up to 160 characters with a button | Rewarded and non-rewarded interstitials, push-style, banners |
| Price we can source | Gambling on our TON accounts: 0.86 TON per thousand impressions, 0.024 TON per click | RichAds lists minimum bids from $0.015 per click |
| Click-through rate | 3.59% across our gambling campaigns, without campaigns above 25% CTR | ”20–40% on average” (PropellerAds, 2025) |
| What you keep | The subscribers of the channel or bot you promoted | Nothing once the budget ends |
The review step on the official side is the constraint, and for gambling it is a hard one. It is also the reason the two products should not be priced against each other click for click.
What have we measured on the official side?
As of 3 October 2026, for campaigns whose title contains casino, bet, slot, gambl or poker. On TON accounts: 4,606 campaigns with spend on 68 accounts, 10,213 TON and 11.8 million impressions — 0.86 TON per thousand. Leaving out campaigns with a click-through rate above 25%: 403,915 clicks at 0.024 TON each, and 51,900 users delivered into the product — channel joins, bot starts, app launches — at 0.19 TON each, with 12.8% of clicks completing the action.
On Euro accounts the same set has €412 of spend on 174k impressions, which is too thin to price from, so we quote no euro cost per user. The declared-niche gambling row on self-service Euro accounts — €2.55 CPM, 13.19% CTR, €0.019 a click — stands on 175k impressions and is too thin to plan on. For prices by country, in euros on Euro accounts and in TON on TON accounts, see the measured CPM by country.
A user delivered into the product is a channel join, bot start or app launch — not a registration and not a deposit. We do not derive a cost per depositor from it, and neither should you.
When does mini-app network traffic actually make sense?
When the goal matches the placement. If you want reach inside Mini Apps, installs for your own tap-to-earn or utility app, or top-of-funnel awareness where a click is just a click, a network gives you inventory that the Telegram Ad Platform does not sell. The problem starts when you price that traffic as if it were a deposit channel without seeing verified deposits. Match the tool to the goal, and ask for the same evidence from a network that you would ask from us.
How often does moderation decline gambling ads?
More often than other niches, and we can put a number on it. On our base moderation declined 8.2% of gambling campaigns — 727 of 8,840, by campaign title — against 4.9% in every other niche; sports betting 6.3%, casino and slots 16.7%. By country the highest figure is Turkey: 28.3% of 145 campaigns (3 October 2026).
Across all niches, the share of reviewed ads that end up approved is 95.6% on Euro accounts, 86.8% on TON and 99.9% on Stars, and over 98% of 13,199 campaigns got a decision within three hours (September 2026). Those are all-niche figures: we publish no approval rate for gambling alone.
How do you run official Telegram Ads for gambling and other high-risk niches?
You open an ad account. For gambling there are two formats:
- Official gambling account — ad budget from €25,000. Your own creatives pass Telegram moderation and run as written, and you get access to the account on ads.telegram.org and to the Pro Panel.
- Test launch on our infrastructure — ad budget from €5,000. We prepare the ad texts and the entry that goes to moderation, our manager launches the campaigns until they are Active, and it is run through the Pro Panel only.
Both open in 2 business days. Nutra, dating and adult, and binary options have a €5,000 minimum ad budget and open in 4 business days. In every case there is no KYC, payment is in any cryptocurrency, the commission is added on top of the ad budget, and the order form shows the exact price before you pay. Opening an account approves no ad: moderation of each ad is a separate step, and the licence and the law of the country you target remain the advertiser’s responsibility.
TON accounts use the same country, language and topic targeting as Euro since 22 August 2026. TON-funded ads are not served in Russia, Ukraine, Israel or Palestine — those markets need a Euro account; every new one is a World account that can advertise in every available country, with the countries chosen for each campaign.
Message @adsly_pro with the product, the destination and the countries you want, and we will tell you which format fits.
