Telegram Search Ads: How They Work, Keywords and Real CPM (2026)
Telegram search ads put your channel or bot into Telegram global search for up to ten keywords per ad. In Adsly Pro Panel (11,596 search campaigns, 130 accounts) Euro accounts paid €27.23 per thousand impressions in search against €4.13 in channels, yet a click cost €0.32 against €0.38, because search results are clicked six and a half times as often. A channel subscriber from search cost €2.58 against €2.77 from channel placements. Volume is small: fewer than one Euro impression in 300 came from search. Adsly, the official Telegram Ads partner, opens a Euro account in 48 hours from €650 that also reaches users in Russia and Ukraine.
Almost every Telegram ad interrupts someone who is reading. A search ad is the one placement that answers someone who is looking: the person typed a word into the search bar, and your channel or bot shows up in the list. That difference runs through every number below, and so do its limits.
Adsly Pro Panel holds 551,607 Telegram Ads campaigns from 442 accounts with 1,285,233,150 impressions. 11,596 of those campaigns, from 130 accounts, ran in Telegram search between 9 April 2025, the day after the format appeared, and 19 October 2026. This guide covers how search ads work according to Telegram’s own documentation, what they cost on Euro, TON and Stars accounts next to channel, audience and bot placements, which keywords advertisers really buy, and when search deserves part of your budget. All figures were measured in Adsly Pro Panel on 19 October 2026.
Telegram search ads: the short answer
A Telegram search ad is a sponsored result in Telegram global search: your channel or bot, shown to people who search for the keywords you chose.
- Up to ten keywords, no ad text. None of our 11,596 search campaigns carries ad text, and none has more than ten keywords.
- The highest CTR in Telegram Ads. Euro accounts: 7.07% in search against 1.09% in channels, 0.76% for audience targeting and 2.39% in bots.
- The highest CPM, an ordinary click. €27.23 per thousand impressions against €4.13 in channels, but €0.320 per click against €0.379.
- A channel-growth tool. €2.58 per subscriber on Euro (channel placements €2.77, audience targeting €3.54); 0.126 TON on TON-currency accounts, the cheapest subscriber of any placement.
- Small by nature. Search was 0.29% of Euro and 0.38% of TON impressions since April 2025. It tops up a campaign; it does not replace one.
- Telegram destinations only. Search campaigns lead to channels (5,093) and bots (6,462); 41 TON campaigns open a chat with an account. Not one links to a website, a post, an invite link or a bot start parameter.
How ads in Telegram search work
Telegram’s API documentation calls them sponsored search results. When someone uses global search to look for chats, the app sends the query with contacts.search and, next to it, contacts.getSponsoredPeers with the same text. What comes back is a list of “sponsored peers” — a channel, a bot or an account — which the app has to display “after the results in contacts.found.my_results and before the results in contacts.found.results”. In plain words: below the chats the person already has, above the public results from the rest of Telegram.
The sponsored peer object carries the peer itself, a random_id and optional sponsor information. It has no field for ad text. A view is counted when the result scrolls into view, a click when it is tapped, and users can report it like any other ad (Telegram API: Sponsored messages).
So in search your channel or bot is the ad. Telegram’s rule 4.1 already demands that every promoted channel, bot and account has “both a profile image and a complete text in their ‘about’ or ‘description’ section”. In search, that photo, the name and the description carry the message an ad text carries everywhere else.
When search ads launched and what the ad form asks for
Telegram did not announce search ads on its blog: none of the posts on telegram.org/blog from March to July 2025 mentions them, and the self-serve help at ads.telegram.org/getting-started still describes only channel placements. Agencies reported the format on 8 April 2025 (eLama, AdIndex) and trade press on 9 April (ppc.world, Sostav). The first search ad in our base started on 9 April 2025.
What those reports described, citing the eLama team:
- a target type called Search, with up to 10 keywords per ad, phrases with spaces allowed, each keyword 4 to 32 characters (a three-letter word needs a space added);
- a title only, with no ad text;
- a link to a Telegram channel or bot only: no websites, invite links, start parameters or links to posts;
- a minimum CPM of €1 (Sostav, AdIndex);
- display in global search on mobile and desktop, with an ad mark.
Our data confirms every point it can check. No campaign has more than ten keywords (429 use exactly ten), the longest keyword is 32 characters, none of the 11,596 has ad text, none of the 11,513 with stored ad details has media, none links to a post, an invite link or a start parameter, and 2,592 of the 2,594 Euro search campaigns bid €1.00 or more (158 bid exactly €1.00).
Who runs Telegram search ads: Euro, TON and Stars accounts
All three account types buy search ads. In our base:
| Account type | Search campaigns | Accounts | Impressions | First ad | Last ad |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Euro | 2,594 | 28 | 668,187 | 9 Apr 2025 | 19 Oct 2026 |
| TON | 7,068 | 95 | 3,796,982 | 10 Apr 2025 | 19 Oct 2026 |
| Stars | 1,934 | 7 | 429,601 | 28 Nov 2025 | 17 Oct 2026 |
| All | 11,596 | 130 | 4,894,770 | 9 Apr 2025 | 19 Oct 2026 |
TON-currency accounts make up most of the Pro Panel base, so we publish their results as market data in TON. Prices below are never converted between currencies.
Search is something advertisers add, not something they run alone: 124 of the 130 search advertisers also run channel, audience or bot placements, and 123 of them launched search campaigns in 2026. Adoption grew quietly. Between April and November 2025, one to five accounts a month started search campaigns; in April 2026 it was 29 and in September 2026, 30.
The account type changes who you can reach. Ads funded from a TON account are not shown in Russia or Ukraine; a Euro account reaches both. It shows in the keywords: 47.4% of keywords on Euro accounts are written in Cyrillic, against 9.9% on TON accounts.
Search vs channels, audience targeting and bots
Search has the highest CTR on every account type, and on Euro and TON the highest CPM. Campaigns with spend since 9 April 2025, CTR and cost per click on the filtered base:
| Placement | Account | Campaigns (accounts) | Impressions | CPM | CTR | Cost per click | Click → join or start |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Euro | 431 (22) | 668,187 | €27.23 | 7.07% | €0.320 | 18.3% |
| Chosen channels | Euro | 45,189 (74) | 53,808,308 | €4.13 | 1.09% | €0.379 | 10.8% |
| Audience (users) | Euro | 61,630 (92) | 165,967,864 | €2.36 | 0.76% | €0.311 | 11.5% |
| Inside bots | Euro | 7,030 (36) | 6,445,849 | €5.04 | 2.39% | €0.211 | 32.9% |
| Search | TON | 3,171 (66) | 3,796,982 | 3.40 | 6.35% | 0.043 | 20.2% |
| Chosen channels | TON | 204,832 (247) | 611,870,850 | 0.96 | 1.94% | 0.049 | 15.6% |
| Audience (users) | TON | 38,515 (88) | 225,247,227 | 0.50 | 2.13% | 0.023 | 18.1% |
| Inside bots | TON | 8,352 (96) | 168,304,062 | 0.73 | 2.69% | 0.027 | 11.9% |
| Search | Stars | 584 (7) | 429,601 | 329.71 | 8.69% | 3.633 | 74.4% |
| Chosen channels | Stars | 3,841 (10) | 3,581,373 | 610.84 | 2.38% | 25.724 | 44.5% |
| Audience (users) | Stars | 1,704 (5) | 2,067,832 | 100.04 | 0.42% | 23.819 | 25.5% |
| Inside bots | Stars | 913 (7) | 6,336,671 | 337.13 | 3.35% | 10.089 | 41.8% |
On Euro accounts a search impression costs 6.6 times a channel impression and gets clicked 6.5 times as often, so the click price ends up 16% lower than in channels. That is the whole economics of search in one line: you pay for intent per impression, and intent pays you back in clicks.
The Euro search base is concentrated, as small bases are: the largest account holds 25.1% of Euro search impressions and the top three 71.8%. On TON the top account holds 20.5%.
Cost per subscriber and per bot start from search
Search is the strongest placement for growing a channel and an average one for bots. Cost per result by placement, campaigns with spend in brackets (“subscriber” = a join after a channel ad, “bot start” = a Start after a bot ad):
| Placement | Euro: per subscriber | Euro: per bot start | TON: per subscriber | TON: per bot start | Stars: per bot start |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | €2.58 (311) | €0.64 (120) | 0.126 (1,378) | 0.288 (1,792) | 4.88 (584) |
| Chosen channels | €2.77 (14,886) | €0.72 (5,976) | 0.412 (83,370) | 0.200 (72,815) | 64.04 (3,817) |
| Audience (users) | €3.54 (19,357) | €0.51 (12,960) | 0.976 (9,595) | 0.066 (26,759) | 93.35 (1,704) |
| Inside bots | €2.01 (1,188) | €0.34 (5,584) | 0.851 (1,777) | 0.169 (5,338) | 24.13 (913) |
On TON-currency accounts a subscriber from search cost less than a third of a subscriber from channel placements. On Euro, search beat channel placements (€2.58 against €2.77) and audience targeting by 27%; only channel ads shown inside bots came cheaper, on 10 accounts. Of the Euro clicks on search ads for channels, 14.4% became joins, against 13.4% in channel placements.
For bots the picture turns. A Euro bot start from search cost €0.64, almost double the €0.34 from bot placements, and 85.9% of those Euro search impressions come from one account. On TON, audience targeting gave the cheapest start, 0.066 TON. The exception is Stars, where a search start cost 4.88 Stars against 24.13 inside bots, on 7 accounts. For the wider channel-versus-bot economics, see Promote a Telegram bot or a channel.
What a Telegram search CPM really costs: the spread
The average CPM of search is misleading: the typical campaign pays far less, and a quarter pays far more. Campaign-level percentiles, campaigns with spend and at least 1,000 impressions:
| Placement | Account | Campaigns (accounts) | 25th pct CPM | Median CPM | 75th pct CPM | 90th pct CPM | Median CTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Search | Euro | 93 (13) | €2.29 | €5.21 | €40.00 | €103.07 | 3.34% |
| Chosen channels | Euro | 4,068 (64) | €2.00 | €3.13 | €5.09 | €9.36 | 0.70% |
| Audience (users) | Euro | 13,215 (82) | €1.28 | €1.43 | €2.00 | €4.00 | 0.47% |
| Inside bots | Euro | 827 (35) | €1.40 | €2.18 | €5.20 | €11.20 | 2.01% |
| Search | TON | 377 (35) | 0.20 | 1.00 | 6.92 | 15.40 | 2.86% |
| Chosen channels | TON | 44,584 (225) | 0.18 | 0.37 | 0.95 | 2.99 | 0.70% |
| Audience (users) | TON | 12,345 (82) | 0.20 | 0.49 | 1.00 | 2.80 | 1.15% |
| Inside bots | TON | 3,790 (82) | 0.13 | 0.20 | 0.48 | 1.55 | 1.47% |
| Search | Stars | 73 (3) | 200.00 | 299.50 | 449.63 | 648.00 | 8.23% |
The median Euro search campaign paid €5.21 per thousand, not €27.23. The average is pulled up by the top quarter, at €40 and more; single-keyword phrase campaigns averaged €69.76 (see the keyword tables below). A campaign at the 25th percentile paid €2.29, close to a channel placement.
Volume is the real constraint. The median Euro search campaign with spend delivered 262 impressions (90th percentile 3,516); on TON the median was 68. Search inventory is the number of people who type your words, and no bid creates more of them.
Which keywords advertisers buy in Telegram search
Pro Panel stores the keywords of every search campaign: 17,950 keyword entries, 7,074 distinct keywords. We report patterns, never the keywords themselves.
| Keyword pattern | Euro | TON | Stars |
|---|---|---|---|
| Campaigns with stored keywords | 2,583 | 6,996 | 1,934 |
| Keyword entries / distinct keywords | 2,978 / 1,524 | 12,358 / 3,825 | 2,614 / 2,173 |
| Campaigns with one keyword | 2,528 | 5,846 | 1,855 |
| Campaigns with all ten | 27 | 333 | 69 |
| Phrases of two words or more | 61.7% | 42.0% | 82.4% |
| Written in Cyrillic / Latin script | 47.4% / 52.5% | 9.9% / 82.4% | 79.3% / 20.7% |
| The advertiser’s own channel or bot name | 0.4% | 5.7% | 0.7% |
| Written like another Telegram username | 10.3% | 0.7% | 10.0% |
“Written like another username” means a one-word Latin keyword with an underscore, digits or a “bot” ending that is not the advertiser’s own handle — on Euro, 5 accounts bought such keywords.
Competition per keyword is thin. Only 769 of the 7,074 distinct keywords were bought by two or more accounts, and 23 by five or more. By theme, across all account types:
| Keyword theme | Keyword entries | Share | Accounts |
|---|---|---|---|
| Trading, signals, investing | 3,698 | 20.6% | 35 |
| Crypto | 587 | 3.3% | 18 |
| VPN and proxy | 574 | 3.2% | 10 |
| Games | 430 | 2.4% | 22 |
| Generic “bot” words | 407 | 2.3% | 15 |
| News and media | 358 | 2.0% | 12 |
| AI tools | 287 | 1.6% | 11 |
| Jobs and earning | 282 | 1.6% | 16 |
| Sports | 220 | 1.2% | 15 |
| Betting and casino | 129 | 0.7% | 14 |
| Education and books | 101 | 0.6% | 13 |
| Shopping and deals | 53 | 0.3% | 16 |
| Movies, series, music | 42 | 0.2% | 4 |
| Everything else (brands, products, other topics) | 10,781 | 60.1% | 115 |
Trading is the one niche that treats search as a channel of its own: one keyword entry in five is about trading, signals or investing.
One keyword per campaign or all ten?
88% of search campaigns (10,229 of 11,596) carry a single keyword. That is the only way to see what each word earns: search ads cannot carry a start parameter, so a campaign is the smallest unit you can measure. But campaigns that filled all ten slots did better on volume and on price:
| Keywords in the campaign | Account | Campaigns (accounts) | Impressions per campaign | CPM | CTR | Cost per click | Cost per join or start |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Euro | 368 (14) | 924 | €20.53 | 5.04% | €0.320 | €2.20 |
| 2–5 | Euro | 10 (7) | 2,899 | €4.30 | 5.19% | €0.057 | €0.72 |
| 6–9 | Euro | 16 (7) | 5,508 | €66.74 | 14.10% | €0.473 | €2.78 |
| 10 | Euro | 26 (10) | 8,099 | €24.75 | 7.58% | €0.212 | €0.84 |
| 1 | TON | 2,730 (38) | 677 | 4.45 | 3.83% | 0.090 | 0.265 |
| 2–5 | TON | 126 (16) | 1,261 | 10.05 | 4.77% | 0.200 | 0.983 |
| 6–9 | TON | 77 (16) | 3,564 | 1.40 | 16.74% | 0.005 | 0.019 |
| 10 | TON | 238 (22) | 6,365 | 1.77 | 7.84% | 0.018 | 0.190 |
The type of keyword matters as much as the count. Single-keyword campaigns with spend:
| Keyword type | Account | Campaigns (accounts) | Impressions | CPM | CTR | Cost per click | Cost per join or start |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Topic, one word | Euro | 166 (13) | 260,948 | €6.47 | 3.62% | €0.179 | €1.44 |
| Topic, phrase | Euro | 195 (11) | 73,002 | €69.76 | 11.10% | €0.534 | €3.20 |
| Topic, one word | TON | 1,380 (36) | 1,301,138 | 1.66 | 2.59% | 0.064 | 0.219 |
| Topic, phrase | TON | 1,322 (15) | 251,330 | 14.58 | 10.81% | 0.131 | 0.325 |
| Own channel or bot name | TON | 22 (13) | 294,463 | 8.03 | 3.01% | 0.027 | 0.077 |
Phrases get clicked three to four times as often as single words, but advertisers bid them up about tenfold, so on both account types a one-word topic keyword returned the cheaper click and the cheaper result. On TON, keywords matching the advertiser’s own name returned the cheapest result of all, 0.077 TON per join or start.
Telegram search ads by niche
Niche sets use the same definitions as the rest of our site (title, text and link words). Search campaigns with spend:
| Niche | Account | Campaigns (accounts) | Impressions | CPM | CTR | Cost per click | Cost per join or start |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Trading (title) | TON | 545 (6) | 255,780 | 11.67 | 9.44% | 0.122 | 0.322 |
| Signals (title) | TON | 163 (6) | 41,655 | 19.93 | 13.23% | 0.149 | 0.324 |
| Forex (text) | TON | 135 (3) | 92,643 | 7.73 | 6.12% | 0.126 | 0.339 |
| Binary options (text) | TON | 171 (2) | 37,442 | 23.03 | 10.07% | 0.225 | 0.463 |
| Crypto (text) | TON | 60 (7) | 69,653 | 7.93 | 5.52% | 0.144 | 0.649 |
| Crypto and Web3 (title) | TON | 15 (4) | 3,254 | 4.64 | 2.15% | 0.215 | 0.558 |
| Gambling (title) | TON | 10 (5) | 72,297 | 2.77 | 0.97% | 0.285 | 6.251 |
| Media and news (text) | TON | 21 (5) | 26,864 | 0.13 | 0.57% | 0.023 | 0.195 |
| VPN (title) | Euro | 2 (2) | 356 | €112.95 | 21.74% | €0.042 | €0.105 |
| Gambling (title) | Euro | 6 (2) | 504 | €1.04 | 0.00% | — | — |
| Signals (title) | Stars | 17 (3) | 820 | 11,185.81 | 17.62% | 63.366 | 117.439 |
Trading, signals and forex are where search works at scale: CTR of 6–13% and a join or start for about a third of a TON. Gambling titles converted poorly: 6.25 TON per join or start. Euro niche rows are thin because most Euro search campaigns promote topics outside these sets.
Do Telegram search ads get declined more often?
Yes, a little. 895 of 11,596 search campaigns were declined, 7.7%, the highest share of the four placements (our rejection-rate study measured 7.6% earlier the same day). By account type: Euro 3.9% (102 of 2,594, of which 96 on one account; only 3 of 28 Euro accounts have a declined search campaign on record), TON 10.9% (767 of 7,068, 392 on one account), Stars 1.3%.
Keyword themes split the same way. Campaigns with a games keyword were declined 159 times out of 328 (117 on one account), sports 83 of 191 (71 on one), crypto 102 of 363 (64 on one), against 31 of 3,558 for trading and none of 91 for VPN. Telegram’s rule 4.8 is the one to respect: keywords “must not exploit harmful, prohibited or sensitive topics to attract clicks or bait users”. A keyword that has nothing to do with the channel is the fastest way to a decline.
How Telegram search ads changed in 2025–2026
Prices in search move with a handful of accounts, so read trends by period. Campaigns with spend, by the month the ad started:
| Period | Euro: campaigns (accounts) | Euro CPM | Euro CTR | TON: campaigns (accounts) | TON CPM | TON CTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apr–Dec 2025 | 223 (8) | €40.02 | 8.30% | 489 (12) | 3.47 | 6.73% |
| Jan–Mar 2026 | 58 (4) | €4.26 | 2.62% | 912 (21) | 3.37 | 2.41% |
| Apr–Jun 2026 | 124 (8) | €12.50 | 6.09% | 740 (30) | 1.89 | 9.41% |
| Jul–Sep 2026 | 18 (5) | €2.82 | 9.17% | 987 (25) | 6.02 | 8.01% |
Month by month in 2026, adoption kept rising while TON prices swung with a few large buyers (one account held between 31% and 90% of a month’s TON search impressions):
| Month 2026 | Accounts starting search ads | New search campaigns | TON: campaigns with spend (accounts) | TON CPM | TON CTR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| January | 12 | 2,338 | 208 (11) | 4.02 | 3.01% |
| February | 12 | 540 | 283 (6) | 7.67 | 5.31% |
| March | 15 | 1,416 | 421 (7) | 1.73 | 1.24% |
| April | 29 | 756 | 176 (14) | 1.06 | 0.96% |
| May | 26 | 1,159 | 432 (17) | 1.93 | 10.47% |
| June | 16 | 451 | 132 (7) | 6.09 | 3.23% |
| July | 21 | 1,238 | 884 (7) | 8.31 | 6.29% |
| August | 26 | 1,223 | 67 (10) | 1.21 | 13.21% |
| September | 30 | 150 | 36 (10) | 3.00 | 1.64% |
| October (1–19) | 22 | 1,512 | 43 (7) | 0.48 | 4.43% |
January’s 2,338 campaigns include 1,935 created in bulk by a single Euro account, one keyword each, none of which spent. October figures are young campaigns still delivering.
When search ads beat channel placements
Use search when the person you want already knows the word for what you offer.
- You grow a channel. Search returned the cheapest subscriber on TON accounts and beat channel placements and audience targeting on Euro.
- Your niche has a search vocabulary. Trading, signals, forex, VPN and AI tools are words people type. One keyword entry in five in our base is about trading.
- You want your own name covered. On TON, own-name keywords returned a join or start for 0.077 TON, the cheapest result in the whole search table. If people search for your channel, make sure your ad is the first thing they meet.
- You can live with small volume. A median Euro search campaign delivered 262 impressions. Run search next to channel and audience placements, not instead of them.
Skip search when you promote a bot on Euro or TON on price alone (bot placements and audience targeting delivered cheaper starts), when you need a website (search cannot link outside Telegram, though a Euro account can in its other placements), or when your offer has no word anyone types.
How to pick keywords, set bids and measure Telegram search ads
- Start with groups of ten. Ten related keywords per campaign gathered about nine times more impressions each than single keywords, at a lower cost per click.
- Mix single words and phrases. One-word topic keywords bring volume and cheap clicks; phrases bring a CTR above 10% but cost about ten times more per thousand.
- Split the winners. Move each keyword that brings joins into its own campaign, so the per-campaign statistics show what that word earns. Without start parameters, this is the only per-keyword attribution search ads have.
- Write keywords in the language of the channel. A Russian-language channel needs Cyrillic keywords; on Euro accounts nearly half of all keywords already are.
- Competitor names: know the rules. Telegram’s guidelines have no rule about a competitor’s name as a keyword; what they forbid is violating trademarks or impersonating brands (5.3) and using “names of other brands to mislead visitors” (4.4). Keep other brands out of your title and your channel.
- Bid low, raise on proof. The median Euro search campaign paid €5.21 per thousand and a quarter paid €2.29 or less. Raise the CPM only on keywords that already deliver joins.
- Measure joins and starts, not clicks. Telegram’s statistics tab counts how many people “joined your channel or started the bot after viewing the sponsored message” (Getting started). Cost per subscriber is the number that tells you whether search beats your channel placements.
In Pro Panel, search has its own bulk mode: paste a list of keywords and the panel splits it into campaigns of up to ten keywords each, or one keyword per campaign. For the full targeting form see the Telegram Ads targeting guide.
Run Telegram search ads from a Euro account with Adsly
A Euro account runs every placement in this guide, search included: in our base, 28 Euro accounts ran 2,594 search campaigns. It also reaches users in Russia and Ukraine, where TON-funded ads are not shown, and in its other placements it can send traffic to your own website, which self-serve accounts do not allow (“Links to external sites are not allowed”, ads.telegram.org).
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 Euro account is a World account: you choose the countries in each campaign. You get access to the account in Telegram Ads itself and in Pro Panel, the strongest panel for Telegram Ads, with bulk search campaigns, hourly statistics and automation. When a search ad is declined, our direct line with Telegram moderation helps you fix it fast. Open a Euro account, or ask your questions at @adsly_pro; if you would rather have specialists run search and channel campaigns for you, see Managed Service.
FAQ
What are Telegram search ads?
Sponsored results in Telegram global search. When someone searches for chats, Telegram can insert a promoted channel, bot or account below the chats the person already has and above the public results. You choose up to ten keywords per ad; the ad has a title and a link, but no ad text.
How many keywords can one Telegram search ad have?
Ten. Launch reports gave 4 to 32 characters per keyword, with phrases allowed. In our base no campaign has more than ten keywords and the longest keyword is 32 characters. 88% of campaigns use a single keyword.
How much do Telegram search ads cost?
The minimum CPM reported at launch was €1. On Euro accounts in Pro Panel, search averaged €27.23 per thousand impressions, the median campaign paid €5.21, and a click cost €0.320. A channel subscriber from search cost €2.58. On TON-currency accounts: 3.40 TON CPM, 0.043 TON per click, 0.126 TON per subscriber.
Can I promote a website in Telegram search?
No. A search ad leads to a Telegram channel or bot (41 of our 11,596 search campaigns open a chat with an account); none links to a website, and none uses an invite link, a post link or a start parameter. To send traffic to a website, use a Euro account with channel or audience placements.
Can I target a competitor’s channel name?
Telegram’s Ad Policies contain no rule against it. Rule 4.8 bans keywords that “exploit harmful, prohibited or sensitive topics”, rule 5.3 bans trademark violations and impersonation, and rule 4.4 bans using other brands’ names to mislead. On Euro accounts, 10.3% of keyword entries look like other Telegram usernames.
Are search ads better than channel placements?
For channel growth, usually yes: on Euro €2.58 per subscriber against €2.77, on TON 0.126 against 0.412. For volume, no: search delivered 0.29% of Euro impressions. For bots, bot placements and audience targeting gave cheaper starts on Euro and TON.
Do Telegram search ads work in Russia and Ukraine?
From a Euro account, yes. Ads funded from TON accounts are not shown in Russia or Ukraine. On Euro accounts, 47.4% of search keywords are written in Cyrillic.
Sources
- Telegram API: Sponsored messages, section “Getting sponsored search results” — sponsored peers in global search, placement between the user’s own results and global results, view and click reporting.
- Telegram Ad Policies and Guidelines — rules 4.1 (profile details), 4.4 (manipulation of content), 4.8 (keyword requirements), 5.3 (third-party rights).
- Telegram Ad Platform Explained — external links not allowed on self-serve accounts, statistics on joins and bot starts.
- Telegram Ads and Telegram blog — checked on 19 October 2026; no blog post announces search ads.
- Launch reports: eLama, 8 April 2025; AdIndex, 8 April 2025; ppc.world, 9 April 2025; Sostav, 9 April 2025.
- Adsly Pro Panel, measured 19 October 2026: 11,596 search campaigns from 130 accounts (9 April 2025 – 19 October 2026) within a base of 551,607 campaigns, 442 accounts and 1,285,233,150 impressions. CPM on all campaigns with spend; CTR and cost per click exclude campaigns with more clicks than impressions or CTR above 25%; spend is never converted between EUR, TON and Stars.
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