Are Telegram Ads appropriate for everyone?
We have been advertising client products and services in Telegram Messenger since July this year. Over that 5 months, we have gained valuable knowledge and experience that we want to share with others.
Some might think that Telegram is a Russian platform, but this is not true.
Telegram developer and operator is Telegram FZ-LLC (located in the United Arab Emirates), which has never been a Russian business. The organisation has clearly announced that it will not become a Russian Federation taxpayer or work with Russian companies. Telegram is strictly following sanctions and categorically against partnership with sanctioned entities.
Historically, Telegram Messenger has been very popular in Russia, although within the last 4 years it has experienced vast popularity around the world, for example, in the US, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain, the Baltic countries, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and many others.
Statistics
Telegram has 700 million active users every month – an increase of 175% since 2018. This means that Telegram has 55.2. million active users each day.
Telegram was the 5th most downloaded app across iOS and Android in Q1 2022 worldwide, in 3rd place in Europe and 8th in Asia.
Number of Telegram app downloads worldwide from January to August 2022 by country
in millions:
Source: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1336855/telegram-downloads-by-country/
Telegram popularity in the USA
Source: https://www.oberlo.com/statistics/most-popular-messaging-apps-in-usa
Telegram ad possibilities and options
Transition from ads takes place to:
- an advertiser’s Telegram channel;
- a Telegram post; or
- a Telegram bot.
Ads aren’t shown in personal chats, groups or chat lists. Ad text length is 160 characters.
Keeping in mind Telegram’s restrictions on the use of external sources in ads, RealWeb offers clients two solutions:
- Native message insertion in informative channels, based on the chosen category, where the external source will be shown;
- Telegram bot implementation with an integrated interface with the goal of heading from the ad to a service, product description or product purchase.
In accordance with platform rules, the ad will be shown on Telegram channels, groups and games with more than 1,000 subscribers per unit.
Payment follows the CPM principle (price per 1,000 impressions). Currently, the average price for CPM is EUR 2 – once the advertiser amount increases, the CPM will as well.
To be able to advertise in Telegram, the advertiser needs to have their own Telegram channel. Before advertising a product or service, our suggestion is to create one (if it hasn’t been already) and warm up the audience. Before the ad goes live, we suggest publishing at least 3 posts over 2 weeks. While the ad is live, we recommend you create and publish other posts as well.
Ad visibility
- 100% visibility is ensured for each ad.
- It will be shown automatically after your target audience scrolls through all messages and appear at the bottom.
The main significance for segmenting your target audience is choosing the correct categories.
Available categories – main targeting!
The available settings in the Telegram ad account aren’t extensive – language, channel or theme enumeration and choosing specific channels.
Currently, Telegram Ads are available in one language – Russian.
Please note that the ad language corresponds to the Telegram channel language. In the ad account settings you must indicate the same language in the channels in which you want to showcase your ads. If the system sees a difference (for example, you chose Russian, but the channel is in English), you will not be able to activate your ad.
In between advertising you have a wonderful opportunity to promote your product or service on Telegram by using the paid post option. Read more about how to do that and the biggest differences and conditions in our next article, Telegram native paid posts.
In the near future, Telegram will offer other languages as well – English, Spanish, etc. We will inform you once they are available.
Telegram Ads GEO targeting. Can you do that? Solutions.
There is no geotargeting option on Telegram. This condition creates difficulties for advertisers who want to focus on a specific country or regional target audience.
With the aim of addressing target audiences by country, we created Telegram channel affiliation, its audience capacity and channel segmentation for our clients and partner agencies, thereby ensuring that customer advertisements are shown to the target audience in specific countries. Yes, there is a risk that the audience size will not be that big, but the ads will be shown for the corresponding country’s audience.
As we mentioned before, the platform allows you to advertise only within its internal sources – channels, posts and bots. You cannot direct your user to your website.
One of our clients (a software solution supplier) had a channel with 2,000+ subscribers where content for products and tools as well training programme offers were posted. Once an ad was created, we decided to launch it with the following marketing funnel:
- The ad directs the client to the channel (offer – company’s software expertise);
- A whole series of published messages awaited users in the client channel with various posts about the client’s software tool importance. More importantly, the posts were published in various formats: the necessary block text notifications for the audience containing the important blocks and a description of the client’s software tool importance with a link to the website (landing page);
- After activating the ad, the applications or registrations came in from article notifications, as well as from users who read the block articles. Conclusion: we attracted the target audience.
The minimal allowed CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) is EUR 2. We recommend you choose this amount before the Telegram ad market explodes.
In many client ads, we have noticed other ads showing up in channels of client interest. In those cases, we have decided to increase the rate to EUR 5-10 for CPM, depending on competition in the channels in question.
At the beginning, the cost will be a minimum CPM of EUR 2 (if you only want to indicate targeting based on the channel themes without choosing specific channels) because the competition is still low.
You don’t need to have a huge ad budget to create Telegram ads. Note: if the advertiser wanted to purchase Telegram Ads directly, they would need to transfer a deposit of EUR 1 million and a prepayment of EUR 1 million, or a total of EUR 2 million. With us, you can test Telegram Ads with a yearly minimum budget of EUR 10,000 (approximately EUR 840/month).
An important Telegram requirement: one ad account replenishment cannot be less than EUR 3,000, but you can spend the money for all your campaigns or within the contract duration.
- You cannot allocate a specific daily budget, only the budget for the whole duration.
- You can freely replenish the budget once it has ended.
- It is possible to replenish the budget of the specific ad from the total budget credited to the account.
Statistics
- Within the ad account, you can follow the main metrics – impressions, subscriptions, bot activity and budget expenditure. Essentially, these metrics are enough to draw initial conclusions and calculate the conversion rate per subscriber and application.
- To explore the statistics in your marketing funnel, all sites in the channel should be marketed with UTM tags. Later on, you can start using external tools, such as Google Analytics.
From our observations, the TGStat tool showcases the most current data rather than in the ad account. It is more convenient to analyse the subscriber growth rate using this tool.
Important information when working with an ad account
Ad account access is set up once you have created a personal account. It is MANDATORY to activate two-factor authentication for all personal profiles that will have access to ad accounts. This keeps your money safe.
Administrator profile settings must not contain a ban on invitations to join channels or groups: Uzstādījumi → Settings -> Groups and Channels -> Who can invite me -> All
Also:
- Before creating ad campaigns, we encourage you to carefully read Telegram Ads policies: https://promote.telegram.org/guidelines;
- In addition to prohibited industries and themes, it is also prohibited to use exclamation marks and dashes, as well as CTA (Call to Action) for action!
- You cannot add channels in list format – you have to copy them in manually and one by one.
Our insights from using Telegram Ads
Telegram Ads work great when adding new subscribers to your channel. On average, we see that the statistics show +15-20% increase in a week’s time.
- The average subscriber attraction price currently stands at EUR 0.25-0.40.
- The conversion rate for attracting new subscribers is 1-1.5%.
Don’t assume that Telegram ads within channels alone can achieve higher business metrics. You need to continue warming up your target audience with the help of posts.
This is the result we achieved with the B2B software tool and training service promotion:
Application price to the website (the user went from the ad to the post, and then to the website) – EUR 25 per application; the conversion rate represented 3.3%.
- The most active day is Thursday. The audience involvement that day reaches up to 15.2%.
- The lowest audience involvement occurs on the weekend – 12%.
- The Telegram audience is also active in the evening from 18-19 when the interaction reaches 6.7%.
- Audience interaction is high all the time, regardless of content length. Interaction with shorter content gives the best results on Fridays when the engagement ratio reaches 5.56%, while the engagement ratio for longer texts peaks on Thursdays – 5.56%.
- In terms of content – on this platform, texts create better audience engagement than images. Audience engagement with texts amounts to 29.17%, compared to 24.91% engagement with photos. The lowest engagement rate is for videos – 19.57%.
Summary
Telegram Ads provides an opportunity to place a text ad with 160 characters on open Telegram channels that have 1,000+ subscribers without coordination with their owners.
What about payment?
You need to have an ad budget for a one-time payment of EUR 3,000, which you can spend on the entire campaign or throughout contract duration (+15% service commission without VAT).
Only you will have the opportunity to get cash-back bonuses of up to 5%, depending on the budget you spend in a quarter.
If you want to begin advertising on Telegram Ads with a knowledgeable and experienced partner, fill out the form on our website or contact us by email.
