Key differences:

Payment

Reporting

Coverage areas

Easy publishing: how to create an ad in Telegram?

Requirements

What user data is available for the target?

Target per user

• Location: country, city
• App Language
• Target topics

Channel Target

• Device Type (iOS, Android, Desktop, and Mobile)
• Adding or excluding interests or specific channels
• Content language

So where does the user information come from?

Initially, user accounts are really depersonalized, but in the course of operation, the algorithms of the application itself begin to collect information. You choose a language, put an avatar, subscribe to thematic channels, and correspond. Also, recently, you can specify the date of birth when registering.

If you have a Premium account enabled in TGStat, the "Audience Analysis" section provides statistics of your channel by the percentage of sexes among your subscribers.

Advertising cabinet

If your budget allows it, you can open an advertising cabinet yourself. To do this, you need to register on the Telegram Ads advertising platform and fill out an application.

After its approval, it will be necessary to deposit 2 million euros. One million will be used for advertising, and the second one will be used as a deposit (it will be returned if you spend 10 million euros per year).

Of course, there are now intermediaries that will allow you to launch targeted advertising without deposits (but with VAT and commission). For example, the services Aitarget One, eLama, Click.ru, Onespot. The average connection cost in the market is 145 thousand rubles.

Imperfections

Seeding

Due to the large number of channels, it is extremely difficult to distinguish a good channel from a bad one (with low-quality content and inflated subscriptions) without a professional eye. This is also because the cost of placing ads may be approximately the same.

By purchasing ads directly, you are not insured against unscrupulous administrators or non-compliance with the terms.

To launch an advertising campaign for a large number of posts, you will need to spend a lot of time, because you need to personally negotiate with all of them, pay for them, and then track the statistics of each channel separately. For the latter, you can use special exchanges or platforms, but this again requires a competent approach.

Another disadvantage is the financial and legal complexity of payment. the channel administrators are individuals. If the advertiser is also an individual, it will not be difficult to transfer the payment to a bank card. It is more difficult if the ad is purchased by a legal entity that needs to make an official payment on the current account.

Target

Targeted advertising determines the channel's geo by the state where the SIM card was registered.

That is why if you do not live in Russia, but you have registered a channel on a Russian SIM card, in any case, Telegram Ads monetization will not be available to it. The same fact will determine prohibited topics for publication (they are formed based on the country's legislation).

And even if you run a channel in a different language, Telegram will consider it Russian and attract the appropriate audience.

Virtual SIM cards do not solve the problem.

For example, if you use a temporary phone number, you will only have a one-time opportunity to confirm that you are its owner. So if something happens to the channel and you need to enter the confirmation code, it won't work.

What about VPNs? When you are sitting with the VPN enabled in Telegram, you will be determined by the resident of the country under which your IP is masked. For this reason, you fall into a different category for targeting. This causes problems for both parties: users don't get relevant ads, and advertisers get useless coverage.

What can't be advertised via target in Telegram?

Despite the fact that there is an official list of prohibited topics for advertising on the platform, it is not exhaustive, because each ad is moderated and individual situations may arise. For example, if you advertise something that doesn't match the channel's theme, the post may not pass verification.

Examples of what is forbidden to advertise in any case:

In fact, the same topics are also prohibited for regular seed advertising, but if the post was not posted via Telegram Ads, then the author of the channel is responsible for such publication, because it was he who allowed the content to reach his subscribers. If the prohibited content was offered in the advertising cabinet, then all responsibility lies with the advertiser.

Drawing conclusions

Seeding and targeting are the working mechanisms of advertising, but делая by analyzing the effectiveness of advertising in Telegram, we make a choice in favor of the latter.

Targeted advertising is constantly evolving and expanding categories for settings. It's easier for us to find our users and allocate our budget more efficiently. Through Telegram Ads, we get high-quality traffic, since the user decides whether to click on the advertising link.

But the bids and entry threshold is higher here. A small ad should clearly catch on. You can choose where to lead the client: to the site, bot, or channel. If the channel is interesting, with high-quality content, then the investment will pay off quickly enough.

It turns out that the effectiveness of the target is indisputable it remains to decide whether it is suitable for you.