Telegram Ads: How to Run Them in 2026 Without Wasting Budget

Telegram Ads is the only system that can put a message inside a public Telegram channel without the owner agreeing to it. This guide covers how to run Telegram Ads end to end: the two kinds of ad account you can buy through, what one ad may contain, the real entry cost in August 2026, the targeting fields that exist, and the moderation rules that reject most first attempts. Every figure comes from Telegram’s own documentation or a vendor’s published pricing, named where used.

What Telegram Ads is, and what it is not

Telegram Ads places sponsored messages in public one-to-many channels with 1000 or more subscribers, a floor stated in Telegram’s Ad Platform documentation. The ad is a short block of text with a button, dropped into the channel feed. The channel owner does not approve it and does not see it in advance.

Telegram’s ads page claims 1 billion users generate 1 trillion views in public broadcast channels every month. Half the money goes to publishers: since the March 2024 announcement, owners of public channels with at least 1000 subscribers receive 50 percent of the ad revenue from their channels, paid out through Fragment.

It does not reach everyone. Telegram Premium removes ads, listed as the No Ads feature in Telegram’s Premium FAQ, and channel owners can switch ads off entirely at boost level 50, the value published in the channel_restrict_sponsored_level_min field of Telegram’s client configuration.

The two ad accounts: TON self-serve and the reseller route

Two doors lead into the same inventory. The first is the self-serve account at ads.telegram.org: log in with a Telegram phone number, create an ad, pay in Toncoin. The minimum CPM is 0.1 Toncoin, per Telegram’s Getting Started page. At the CoinGecko price of 1.37 US dollars per TON on 30 August 2026, that is roughly 14 US cents per thousand views. Targeting here is narrow: you enter the exact channel links where the ad should run.

The second is a reseller account. Resellers open an account for you on the full Telegram Ads platform and add a fee. AdsGram documents its numbers publicly: minimum CPM 1 USDT, minimum daily budget 10 USDT, and 500 USDT frozen when you launch your first campaign for a new region or language. That 500 is reserved per region and per language, not once, and is released within 24 hours if the campaign is declined.

OneSpot, the Russian-language reseller formerly trading as Aitarget One, advertises tiers from 250 euro on its Telegram Ads page, with a crypto tier from 20 TON. Read the headline number carefully: a second pricing block on the same page puts its Official tier at 500 euro. The budget calculator underneath is firmer, and more expensive. Commission runs 23 percent on the base and real estate tariffs, 28 percent on education and 30 percent on crypto, with VAT charged on top at top-up. Minimum first spend is 500 euro, or 1,500 euro on the crypto tariff, dropping to 150 euro if you already hold an account. Figures like a two million euro minimum for a direct Telegram account circulate on agency blogs but appear nowhere in Telegram’s documentation. Ask any reseller for current terms in writing.

What one ad is allowed to contain

The format is tight. Telegram’s Ad Policies and Guidelines cap ad text at 160 characters including spaces. Each ad is that text plus one button. Line breaks, bullet points and numbered lists are explicitly disallowed, so the 160 characters are one continuous block.

Richer creative is a surcharge, not an inclusion. AdsGram’s campaign builder lists the CPM multipliers: an avatar adds 30 percent, custom emoji through @AdsMarkdownBot adds 20 percent, a photo adds 50 or 80 percent, a video adds 70 or 100 percent. Asset specs are fixed: photo .jpeg or .png at 16:9, from 640 by 360 to 1920 by 1080; video .mp4 up to 20 MB, 16:9, minimum width 640 pixels, 3 to 60 seconds.

Where the ad actually appears

Most guides stop at the channel feed. Telegram’s client API documentation for sponsored messages describes more surfaces, and they change how you read view counts.

• Channel feed. Ads are injected between posts. The server sets how many posts sit between ads through the posts_between field, and results are cached for 5 minutes per channel.
• Full-screen video player. When a user watches a channel video full-screen, text ads appear in a small box, with a start delay, a delay between ads and minimum and maximum display durations set by the server. Ads are tied to the player, not one video, and timers pause when the viewer pauses.
• Global search. Sponsored peers are returned for search queries and shown among the results. Telegram’s guidelines confirm the buying side exists too: section 4.8 sets rules for search keywords selected for ad placement.
• Bots. Ads run in chats with bots too, and Telegram’s revenue documentation confirms bot owners also receive 50 percent.

The targeting fields you actually get

Targeting is coarse compared to Meta, and deliberately so. Telegram’s ads page promises only that it does not use the contents of private chats or contact lists for ad targeting; the context it sells is the channel, not a profile of the person reading it. In the full platform, as documented by AdsGram, a campaign takes one of two shapes.

Users format. Target country and target user language are both required. Topics can be included or excluded, channel audiences listed or excluded with a comma-separated list in the form A,-B,C, and device type set to All devices, Android, iOS, Mobile or Desktop.

Channels format. Target channel language is required; specific channels are optional and flagged in the interface as increasing CPM.

One rule matters more than the rest: targeting cannot be changed after the ad is created. Telegram’s documentation points you instead to Create a similar ad, which clones the text and settings into a new draft. Plan your first week around duplicates, not edits.

What it costs, and how the auction decides

Pricing is CPM only. The Telegram Ad Platform Terms of Service define CPM as the price for one thousand impressions and describe an auction that picks the best offered CPM. There is no cost per click bidding, so your CPM is the whole lever.

Two mechanics catch people out. Budgets cannot be reduced once submitted: Telegram’s documentation says to delete the ad and rebuild it lower, returning the funds to your balance. And unspent balance is not yours to take back. Section 4.3 of the Ad Platform Terms of Service states funds on your balance are advance paid credits that cannot be withdrawn, transferred, or refunded. Deposit what you intend to spend.

Where the click is allowed to go

In the self-serve TON account the rule is absolute: every link in the text and URL field must lead to a channel or bot on Telegram, as t.me/link or @link. External sites are not allowed.

On the full platform reached through resellers, external websites are allowed in the URL field. AdsGram’s moderation rules list the approved formats: t.me/namechannel or @namechannel, t.me/namechannel/123 for a post, bot deep links such as t.me/name_bot?start=ABC, and direct HTTPS website links. HTTP is refused, shorteners are banned, and macros such as {click_id} are not accepted, so attribution has to live in a static parameter or a bot start payload.

Telegram’s guidelines add constraints that hold in every account type: one link in the ad text at most, leading to the same destination as the button. Destinations may not exist only to redirect, and automatic 302 or .htaccess redirects to another domain are grounds for rejection.

Moderation: the rules that reject most first ads

Review takes 24 to 48 hours on business days at AdsGram, operating 08:00 to 22:00 UTC. Telegram’s guidelines and reseller moderation rules overlap almost completely, and rejections cluster in a few places.

• Copy. No profanity or masked profanity, no gimmicky capitalisation, spacing or symbols, no intrusive emoji, no line breaks or lists. AdsGram adds a cap of one exclamation mark per ad and bans superlatives such as best or number one.
• Claims. No clickbait, no absolute or comparative claims, no implied negative outcomes such as check our channel so you do not get scammed, no promised earnings.
• Destination quality. Promoted channels, bots and accounts need a profile image and a filled-in about or description section, and a promoted channel must have at least one post published in the two weeks before review. AdsGram sets a floor of 100 subscribers and recommends 400 or more.
• Verticals that are simply out. Gambling and betting, payday lending, get-rich-quick and pyramid schemes, trading signals, unlicensed crypto, dating, political and religious campaigning, unlicensed medical products and supplements, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, weapons, malware, and bought views or subscribers.
• Language match. Guideline 4.7 says the targeted channel’s language should match the language of the ad and of the destination, and moderation enforces it. An English ad pointed at Spanish channels is a rejection, not an experiment.

Writing 160 characters that pass

The constraints do most of the work. With no line breaks the ad reads as one sentence inside a feed of posts, so write a statement, not a banner. With superlatives banned, specificity is the only differentiator left: a number, a named thing, a defined outcome. Lead with the concrete noun, keep the ad text and the destination name identical, and write several variants before launch, because you cannot edit targeting later.

The destination is the campaign

Telegram Ads pushes you toward a Telegram destination, usually the right call: a click that stays in the app skips a browser load, a cookie banner and a form. The strongest destinations are a bot with a start parameter identifying the ad, or a channel whose last three posts match the ad text.

A bot also solves the tracking gap. With dynamic macros banned, a static start parameter per ad, such as t.me/your_bot?start=ad07, is the cleanest way to know which creative produced which conversation. Build the bot before you fund the account: a bot that fails to answer commands on mobile and desktop is an explicit rejection reason in Telegram’s guidelines.

What the platform reports, and what it hides

The Statistics tab shows creation date, CPM, budget and total views, plus a graph of views alongside the number of times a user joined your channel or started your bot after seeing the ad. That join and start count is the closest thing to a native conversion metric.

What it does not give you is anything downstream of that click. Statuses run Stopped, In Review, Declined, Active and On Hold. Reseller accounts add optimisation: AdsGram’s network campaigns offer target CPC and target CPA, but both need conversion tracking plus at least 10 recorded conversions before optimisation becomes available, and a target CPA campaign with no conversions in its learning phase stops automatically.

Telegram Ads, channel seeding and mini app networks are three different buys

Telegram advertising covers three markets that share nothing but the app. Official Telegram Ads is what this article describes: sponsored messages, CPM pricing, 160 characters, heavy moderation, no negotiation with channel owners. Channel seeding means buying a post directly from a channel admin, priced per placement, with almost no format rules and no platform moderation, covered in our guide to Telegram channel seeding. Mini app networks are the third: full-screen video and task formats inside Telegram mini apps, sold in USDT, mostly to crypto and gaming apps. If a vendor offers targeting by wallet balance or by motivated users, that is a mini app network, not sponsored messages in channels.

The order to do this in

Fix the destination first: profile image, filled description, a post inside the last 14 days, a bot that answers on desktop and mobile. Then pick the account type by destination. A Telegram only link and a small test belong in the TON self-serve account at 0.1 Toncoin; an external website, or country and topic targeting, means a reseller and the 500 USDT reservation per region. Write five variants at 160 characters, launch at the floor CPM with the smallest deposit allowed, and raise the bid in small steps only when delivery is slow. Judge on joins and bot starts rather than views, and clone rather than edit, because targeting freezes the moment the ad is created.

FAQ

What is the minimum I can spend on Telegram Ads?

At ads.telegram.org the only published floor is a minimum CPM of 0.1 Toncoin, about 14 US cents per thousand views at the 1.37 dollar TON price on 30 August 2026. In AdsGram’s reseller account the floors are 1 USDT CPM, 10 USDT daily budget and 500 USDT frozen for the first campaign in each new region or language. Moderation there runs 24 to 48 hours on business days.

How many characters can a Telegram ad have?

160 characters including spaces, per section 1 of Telegram’s Ad Policies and Guidelines. Line breaks, bullet points and numbered lists are not allowed, so it is one continuous block plus a button.

Can a Telegram ad link to my website?

Not from the self-serve TON account, where every link must be a t.me or @ link to a Telegram channel or bot. Through a reseller account, direct HTTPS website links are allowed in the URL field. Shorteners and macros such as {click_id} are rejected in both.

Can I get unspent money back out of the ad account?

No. Section 4.3 of the Telegram Ad Platform Terms of Service states funds on your balance are advance paid advertising credits that cannot be withdrawn, transferred to another account, or refunded.