What is Telegram Ads? Everything You Need to Know (2026)

Telegram Ads is a native advertising platform by Telegram that displays sponsored messages in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers. With 1B+ monthly active users across 200+ countries, advertisers pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM), with bids from 0.1 TON on TON cabinets. On our own accounts the average CTR is 0.85% and the average CPM €2.97 on Euro accounts (0.90 TON on TON accounts).

Whether you’re a crypto project looking for native audience, an eCommerce brand exploring new channels, or a media buyer testing beyond Facebook and Google — this guide covers everything you need to know about Telegram Ads in 2026, from how the platform works to the exact costs and benchmarks you can expect.

TL;DR: Telegram Ads are text-based sponsored messages shown in public channels (1,000+ subscribers). Three cabinet types: Euro (billing in euro, websites and Telegram destinations — our recommendation), TON (funded in TON, Telegram destinations only), Stars (beginners). Average CPM €2.97 and CTR 0.85% on our Euro accounts. Best for crypto, fintech, education, and niche communities. No minimum budget on self-serve TON/Stars. You can launch your first campaign in under 10 minutes.

Table of Contents

1. 1. How Telegram Ads Work

2. 2. Three Types of Telegram Ads Cabinets

3. 3. How Much Do Telegram Ads Cost?

4. 4. Targeting Options

5. 5. Who Uses Telegram Ads?

6. 6. Getting Started in 5 Steps

7. 7. Telegram Ads vs Other Platforms

8. 8. Tools for Managing Telegram Ads

9. 9. Telegram Ads Benchmarks 2026

10. 10. Frequently Asked Questions

1. How Telegram Ads Work

Telegram Ads are sponsored messages that appear at the bottom of public channels. When a user scrolls through a channel with 1,000+ subscribers, they see a short text-based ad with an optional media attachment. The advertiser pays only for impressions (CPM model — cost per 1,000 views).

Unlike traditional social media ads that interrupt a feed, Telegram Ads are integrated into the channel experience. They appear as a single sponsored post at the end of the latest messages, making them less intrusive but still visible to engaged readers.

Key Mechanics

• Placement: Ads appear in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers

• Payment model: CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) — you pay for views, not clicks

• Ad formats: Text-only, text + image, text + video (new in 2026)

• Targeting: By channels, topics, geography, and language (varies by cabinet type)

• Destinations: Ads can link to channels, bots, websites, or Mini Apps

• Moderation: All ads are reviewed before publishing — usually in under an hour; over 98% of campaigns we measured were decided within three hours

• Character limit: Up to 160 characters of ad text recommended for optimal CTR

How users see your ad: A reader opens their favorite crypto channel, scrolls through the latest posts, and at the bottom sees your sponsored message with a CTA button. If interested, they tap the button and land on your channel, bot, or website. You’re charged per 1,000 times this ad is displayed — regardless of whether users click.

2. Three Types of Telegram Ads Cabinets

Telegram offers three distinct advertising account types, each with different payment methods, moderation processes, and targeting capabilities. Choosing the right cabinet is one of the most important decisions for your campaign success.

Source: ADSLY Research, April 2026. Approval rates based on 500,000+ campaigns.

Feature	TON Cabinet	Euro Cabinet	Stars Cabinet
Currency	TON (crypto)	EUR	Stars (Telegram)
Lowest bids we see	0.1 TON	about €0.60–€1.00	50 Stars
Moderation	Automated, no escalation	Human escalation via Adsly	Telegram
Approval Rate	86.8%	95.6%	99.9%
Geo Targeting	Yes (since Aug 2026)	Yes	Yes (since Aug 2026)
Topic Targeting	Yes (since Aug 2026)	Yes	Yes (since Aug 2026)
Min Deposit	None self-serve (€500+ via ADSLY)	€500+	None
Best For	Crypto, global reach	Website traffic, billing in euro	Beginners, creative testing

TON Cabinets

TON cabinets use Telegram’s native cryptocurrency (Toncoin) for payments. Bids start at 0.1 TON, with no minimum deposit when self-serve (from €500 through ADSLY), and Telegram’s automated moderation, which usually decides within an hour. Since August 2026 TON uses the same country, language and topic targeting as Euro; what stays Euro-only is external website destinations, in-stream video and human moderation escalation. TON-funded ads are not served in Russia, Ukraine, Israel or Palestine.

Euro Cabinets

Euro cabinets accept EUR payments and offer the full targeting form — country, topic (42 predefined categories) and language (34+ languages), which TON and Stars have also used since August 2026 — plus external website destinations and in-stream video, which TON does not have. Moderation is as fast as on TON and Stars — usually under an hour — with a 95.6% approval rate and the option of human escalation through Adsly; the minimum deposit is €500+. Every new Euro account is a World account with every available country, and it is the type we recommend for any destination — a website or a Telegram channel, bot or Mini App.

Stars Cabinets

Stars cabinets use Telegram’s internal Stars currency. They have the highest approval rate (99.9%) and no minimum deposit. Stars cabinets are ideal for beginners testing the platform and for niches that face stricter moderation on TON/Euro (betting, dating, supplements). Many experienced advertisers use Stars for creative testing before scaling on Euro.

ADSLY tip: Start with Stars cabinets to test creatives cheaply with high approval rates. Once you find winning ads, scale on a Euro World account — crypto audiences and website destinations included.

3. How Much Do Telegram Ads Cost?

Telegram Ads use a CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) pricing model, and each account is billed in its own currency. Measured on our own accounts on 3 October 2026 — 357,827 campaigns with spend, 1.13B impressions:

Account type	Average CPM	Average CTR	Average cost per click
Euro	€2.97	0.85%	€0.34
TON	0.90 TON	2.18%	0.040 TON
Stars	395 Stars	3.08%	12.8 Stars

Those are three currencies; compare within a row, not across. The country you target moves the price more than anything else — on Euro accounts, €0.20 in Uzbekistan and €0.25 in India against €2.68 in Russia and €2.92 in Turkey. See the CPM by country guide.

By vertical we have measured five, on self-service Euro accounts:

Vertical	CPM	CTR	Impressions
Binary options	€1.41	0.38%	1.35M
Forex	€1.88	1.89%	418k
Crypto	€1.91	0.53%	821k
Gambling	€2.55	13.19% (read with caution)	175k
VPN	€2.61	1.06%	203k

We do not publish figures for other niches: we cannot separate them reliably in our data.

Minimum Budgets

• TON cabinets: No minimum deposit when self-serve on ads.telegram.org. A TON cabinet opened through ADSLY starts from €500.

• Euro cabinets: Minimum initial deposit of €500+.

• Stars cabinets: No minimum deposit. Start with any amount of Stars.

Budget recommendation: While self-serve TON has no minimum, ADSLY recommends $500–$1,000 for meaningful testing. This budget allows you to test 5–10 creatives across 10–20 channels, gathering enough data (50,000–100,000 impressions) to identify winning combinations.

4. Targeting Options

Telegram Ads offers several targeting methods. The available options depend on your cabinet type. Here’s a breakdown of every targeting method available in 2026:

Channel Targeting (All cabinets)

Select specific public channels where your ads appear. This is the most precise targeting method — choose channels your audience already follows. For example, if you’re promoting a DeFi protocol, target the top 50 crypto analysis channels. Channel targeting is available across all three cabinet types and is the single biggest lever for campaign performance.

Topic Targeting

Every cabinet type offers 42 predefined topics that let you reach channels by category without selecting them individually. Topics include: Cryptocurrencies, Business & Entrepreneurship, Technology & Internet, Education, Health & Medicine, Fashion & Beauty, Travel & Tourism, Video Games, Fitness, News & Media, and 32 more. Topic targeting is ideal when you want broad reach across a category rather than precise channel selection.

Geographic Targeting

Target users by country and region, on every cabinet type since August 2026. Available in every country a Euro cabinet can advertise in, including Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Georgia, UAE, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Israel, Turkey, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Ethiopia, Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Colombia, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Uruguay, Paraguay. Geographic targeting uses the user’s phone number country code and IP-based location, making it reasonably accurate for country-level targeting.

Language Targeting

Target users by their Telegram interface language. 34+ languages supported, including English, Russian, Spanish, Portuguese, Arabic, Hindi, Indonesian, and more. Useful for reaching specific language communities regardless of their geographic location.

Bot and Mini App Targeting

Promote directly to Telegram bot users or Mini App audiences. This newer targeting method lets you reach users who have interacted with specific bots or apps within Telegram, offering behavioral targeting that was previously unavailable on the platform.

Targeting strategy: Whatever the cabinet type, channel selection is your strongest lever. Spend time researching channels — the quality of your channel list determines 70–80% of your campaign performance. Use tools like ADSLY’s channel analyzer to evaluate audience overlap and engagement rates before launching.

5. Who Uses Telegram Ads?

Telegram Ads draws the advertisers that other platforms price out or turn away — crypto projects, trading and betting offers, VPN services — along with anyone growing a Telegram channel or bot. We do not publish a share of advertisers by category: campaigns on our accounts are not labelled by industry reliably enough to count. What we can show is what the verticals we can separate actually paid. Here’s the breakdown based on ADSLY platform data — self-service Euro accounts, all countries blended, 3 October 2026:

Vertical	CPM	CTR	Cost per click	Impressions
Binary options	€1.41	0.38%	€0.374	1.35M
Forex	€1.88	1.89%	€0.102	418k
Crypto	€1.91	0.53%	€0.358	821k
Gambling	€2.55	13.19%	€0.019	175k
VPN	€2.61	1.06%	€0.246	203k

Treat the gambling click-through with caution: 13% on 175k impressions is high even after impossible click rates are removed. We have no measured figure for education, eCommerce, SaaS, dating or news, so they are not in the table.

How that compares with Facebook and Google: across all our Euro campaigns the average is €2.97 CPM and 0.85% CTR over 257.7M impressions. Google Search is sold per click, not per impression — $5.26 average cost per click and 6.66% CTR in 2025, from LocaliQ’s analysis of 16,446 campaigns (WordStream). The two numbers measure different things, so neither proves one platform cheaper; the Telegram Ads vs Google Ads guide sets them side by side. We quote no Facebook figure, because we have not verified one.

Top Markets in Our Data

Telegram has over 1 billion monthly active users (Pavel Durov, March 2025). We do not quote user counts by country — we have none we could verify. These are the markets where campaigns on our own accounts delivered the most impressions:

• Russia: 163.0M impressions on Euro accounts — €2.68 CPM, 0.65% CTR. TON-funded ads are not served there

• India: 17.3M on Euro accounts (€0.25 CPM, 1.12% CTR) and 12.0M on TON accounts (0.42 TON, 1.77%)

• USA: 14.8M on TON accounts — 0.39 TON CPM, 1.97% CTR

• Uzbekistan: 6.4M on Euro accounts (€0.20, 0.90%) and 5.5M on TON accounts (0.26 TON, 0.65%)

• Saudi Arabia: 6.0M on TON accounts — 1.21 TON CPM, 1.26% CTR

• Germany and Brazil: 5.5M on TON accounts in Germany (0.27 TON, 2.86%); 4.7M on Euro accounts in Brazil (€2.22, 1.64%)

Euro figures are single-country campaigns as of 3 October 2026; TON figures cover 22 August–3 October 2026 and are in TON, never converted to euros. Full tables are in the CPM by country guide.

6. Getting Started with Telegram Ads in 5 Steps

Launching your first Telegram Ads campaign takes less than 10 minutes. Here’s the step-by-step process:

1. Choose your cabinet type. Euro for crypto, global audiences and website destinations alike — a World account with every available country; Stars for beginners and creative testing. If unsure, start with Stars — highest approval rate, no minimum deposit.

2. Create an account. Go to ads.telegram.org and create your advertising cabinet. Or connect your existing cabinet to ADSLY for bulk management and AI automation features.

3. Select target channels or topics. Research and select 10–20 public channels your audience follows, or target by topic, country and language — every cabinet type has the same form since August 2026. Quality channel selection is the #1 factor for campaign success.

4. Write your ad text. Keep it under 160 characters. Lead with a benefit or hook, not your brand name. Include a clear CTA. Test 3–5 variations to find what resonates. Example: “Track 100+ Telegram Ads campaigns from one dashboard. Free 3-day trial →”

5. Set CPM bid and budget, submit for moderation. Start with the minimum CPM for your cabinet type. Set a daily budget of $10–$50 for testing. Submit your ad — moderation usually decides in under an hour.

First campaign checklist: Start with 3–5 ad creatives per campaign. Test for 2 business days before making changes. Kill anything below 0.3% CTR. Scale winners by increasing budget gradually (20–30% per day). Rotate creatives every 5–7 days to avoid ad fatigue.

7. Telegram Ads vs Other Platforms

How does Telegram Ads stack up against the major advertising platforms? Here’s an honest comparison:

Feature	Telegram Ads	Google Ads	Facebook Ads	TikTok Ads
Pricing	CPM — €2.97 average on our Euro accounts	CPC — $5.26 average on Search (2025)	Auction, CPM or CPC	Auction, CPM or CPC
Crypto Friendly	Yes	Restricted	Very restricted	Restricted
Targeting Depth	Channels, topics, country, language	Keyword + demo	Interest + demo	Interest + demo
Ad Format	Text, image, video	Text, display, video	Image, video, carousel	Video-first
Best For	Niche communities	Search intent	Broad targeting	Gen Z, viral

When to Choose Telegram Ads

• Crypto / DeFi / Web3: Telegram is one of the few major platforms that welcomes crypto advertising without heavy restrictions.

• Niche audiences: If your target audience gathers in specific Telegram channels, few platforms offer this level of contextual targeting.

• Low budgets: With no minimum on self-serve TON and bids from 0.1 TON, Telegram is one of the most accessible platforms for small advertisers.

• High-risk niches: Betting, dating, supplements, and forex face fewer restrictions than on Google or Facebook.

When NOT to Choose Telegram Ads

• Mass consumer brands: If you need to reach millions of people with broad demographics, Facebook and Google are more efficient.

• Search intent: If your product solves a problem people actively search for, Google Ads will deliver higher-intent traffic.

• Visual-first products: Fashion, food, and lifestyle brands perform better on Instagram and TikTok where visual formats dominate.

8. Tools for Managing Telegram Ads

The native Telegram Ads manager at ads.telegram.org provides basic campaign creation and reporting. However, for advertisers managing multiple campaigns or accounts, dedicated management platforms offer significant advantages:

• Bulk campaign management — Create, edit, and manage 100+ campaigns from a single dashboard

• IF/THEN automation rules — Automatically pause underperforming campaigns, increase budgets on winners, and rotate creatives based on CTR thresholds

• AI-powered campaign creation — Generate ad texts, select channels, and optimize CPM bids with AI assistance

• Hourly analytics and reporting — Track performance at hourly granularity to identify peak engagement windows

• Team collaboration — Role-based access for agencies managing multiple client accounts

• A/B testing — Structured creative testing with statistical significance tracking

ADSLY supports all three cabinet types (TON, Euro, Stars) with an English interface, automation rules and a managed service option. Connect your existing Telegram Ads cabinet in 2 minutes and start managing campaigns with a free 3-day Pro trial.

9. Telegram Ads Benchmarks 2026

Measured on our own accounts on 3 October 2026 — 357,827 campaigns with spend on 381 accounts, 1.13B impressions. Each column is in its own currency.

Metric	TON	Euro	Stars
Average CPM	0.90 TON	€2.97	395 Stars
Average CTR	2.18%	0.85%	3.08%
Average cost per click	0.040 TON	€0.34	12.8 Stars
Approval Rate	86.8%	95.6%	99.9%
Moderation Time (measured)	Under 1 h typical; 99.9% ≤3 h	Under 1 h typical; 98.5% ≤3 h	Under 1 h typical; 100% ≤3 h

The Euro column is mostly Russia, our largest Euro market, where click-through is 0.65%; TON accounts do not serve Russia. Part of the CTR gap is geography rather than account type.

What we do not publish

We have no reliable hour-of-day performance split, so we do not name “best hours” to run. Cost per subscriber or per sale depends on your funnel; measure it with postbacks. The full tables are in the Telegram Ads Benchmark Report 2026, and CTR percentiles in the CTR and CPM benchmarks guide.

Stop managing Telegram Ads manually. ADSLY runs Telegram Ads for 200+ advertisers — and every new Euro cabinet is a World account for every available country. All 3 cabinet types (TON, Euro, Stars). IF/THEN automation. Ad text optimization. Bulk edit 100+ campaigns in one click. Start free — 3-day Pro trial →

Frequently Asked Questions

What is Telegram Ads?

Telegram Ads is Telegram’s native advertising platform that displays sponsored messages in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers. Advertisers pay per 1,000 impressions (CPM model).

How much do Telegram Ads cost?

On our accounts the average CPM is €2.97 on Euro accounts, 0.90 TON on TON accounts and 395 Stars on Stars accounts. The country you target moves it most: €0.20 in Uzbekistan against €2.92 in Turkey on Euro accounts. Self-serve TON cabinets have no minimum budget.

What is the average CTR for Telegram Ads?

On our accounts the average CTR is 0.85% on Euro accounts, 2.18% on TON accounts and 3.08% on Stars accounts, across 1.13B impressions.

Can I advertise crypto on Telegram?

Yes. Unlike Google and Facebook, Telegram allows crypto advertising. A Euro World account suits crypto best: it reaches the native crypto audience in every available country, can link to your website, and 95.6% of reviewed Euro ads end up approved on accounts we operate (86.8% on TON).

What’s the difference between TON, Euro, and Stars cabinets?

TON uses cryptocurrency payment with Telegram’s automated moderation. Euro uses EUR, allows external website destinations and human moderation escalation. Stars uses Telegram’s internal currency with the highest approval rate (99.9%). See the cabinet comparison above for the full breakdown.

How long does Telegram Ads moderation take?

Usually under an hour on every cabinet type. Across 13,199 campaigns we measured in September 2026, over 98% had a decision within three hours on Stars, TON and Euro alike; the time of day you submit made no measurable difference.

What is the minimum budget for Telegram Ads?

Self-serve TON cabinets on ads.telegram.org have no minimum; a TON cabinet opened through ADSLY starts from €500. Euro cabinets require a €500+ initial deposit. Stars cabinets have no minimum. For meaningful testing, ADSLY recommends $500–$1,000.

Can I target specific countries with Telegram Ads?

Yes, on every cabinet type: since August 2026 Euro, TON and Stars use the same country, language and topic targeting form. You can also pick channels popular in your target country.

What ad formats does Telegram support?

Text-only ads (up to 160 characters recommended), text with image, and text with video (new in 2026). All ads include a CTA button linking to a channel, bot, website, or Mini App.

How do I get started with Telegram Ads?

Create a cabinet at ads.telegram.org, fund your account, create a campaign with targeting and ad text, and submit for moderation. Or use ADSLY for AI-assisted campaign creation with a free 3-day Pro trial.