Who is Your Target Audience?

Before you start buying advertising and promoting your channel using paid ways, you should as accurately as possible determine the target audience and draw up a subscriber profile. This is the only way you can choose an ad platform with an audience potentially interested in your content. If you show ads to non-target audiences, chances are few people will subscribe to your channel and your ad budget will be wasted.

Depending on the channel field of activity and topic, the profile may contain various characteristics of the target audience:

Geo and language

First, determine for yourself the country of residence of your audience and the language in which it communicates. Some Geos can be quite narrow. For example, reading a channel about Moscow will be interesting mainly for residents of this city. And, when selecting websites for advertising, you should focus on them. In addition, you should not advertise on channels with an audience that speaks in a language other than that of your channel.

Geo can often be mixed. For example, many channels from Russia are also read by residents of the CIS countries as Russian is common among them. Also, the channel can be with an audience from almost all over the world. Channels with WW Geo (Worldwide) are usually in English, which is the most common, and touch on topics of interest to audiences of all countries.

Interests

If you have a narrow-topic channel, then the main interests of users will be associated with it, as well as with related topics. If you have a broad-based channel, for example, "humor and entertainment", the interests of users can be completely different. In this case, it is better not to look for their specific interests, but to pay attention to the other criteria listed below.

Audience age

A very important metric that directly affects the monetization of your channel and the effectiveness of advertising campaigns. If your channel is dedicated to youth clothing or modern gadgets, it is unlikely to be of interest to an audience of 40+. Conversely, if you are covering serious topics, selling luxury real estate, or running a political channel, target an older audience.

Gender

Another important component is understanding the gender of the audience interested in your content. Some topics may only be of interest to a male audience, for example, technical channels. Others are only female, for example, beauty and fashion channels. It is important to select advertising websites with the target audience of your gender. If the content is equally interesting for men and women, any audience will suit you.

There are three main ways to determine the audience for a channel:

1. Your own assessment of the content and an idea of who will be interested in it.
2. Audience poll. If you want to determine the audience on someone else's channel, ask the owner if he did polls.
3. Third-party services. Channels registered with Telemetr on the catalog website contain information on the ratio of the audience by gender. Also, such information can be in Tgstat for those channels that collected statistics through the Crosser Bot and opened public access to this information on the platform's website. It should be noted that at the moment these services determine the gender only for the CIS countries and have a large error due to the specifics of the available method for determining this information.

Which channels to choose for advertising

The process of choosing channels for advertising placement always contains many pitfalls and questions. Is there your target audience here? Is the number of subscribers increased? Will the channel administrator cheat?

In order to get the result, we recommend that you carefully study the statistics of each channel where you would like to place an advertisement. This can be done using both standard channel analysis and the Tgstat and Telemetr services. Next, we will look at what important metrics you should pay attention to when evaluating a channel.

Coverage and number of posts per day

Open the channel and view the latest posts. Estimate how many posts are published per day and how many views they get. This must be done in order to determine how many views of posts are natural for a given channel.

Before analyzing channels, you need to know one of the specific features of Telegram - non-unique nature of the displayed coverage. Telegram will count the view of the same user for the post again in about a day.

Big channels with a large number of posts per day gain about 20-40% of views of the audience per week, with more rare posts – up to 60% (overlapping views). Small, young channels may have higher coverage rates, as well as the most popular channels through reposts. Channels with short posts (when several posts are immediately visible on the screen) can gain more than 100% coverage due to repeated views.

Conclusions that we can draw after the analysis:

1. If the coverage seems unnaturally big or small, it may well turn out that the channel was ptomoted or developed in dubious ways.
2. If any of the posts on the channel scored very few views or did not get them at all compared to others on the channel, then most often this is a sign of cheating views.
3. If the channel has a very high overlay rate of views (and conversion from the overlay will be much lower), then buying ads in such a channel makes sense with a lower CPM.

Channel creation date

Scroll to the very first post to see the creation date. We recommend that you choose channels created a long time ago for advertising. A newly created channel with a large number of subscribers will in most cases be fake.

A striking example is the Transformer channel, when it made the link private. Having created a fake channel, completely promoted by bots, with the same name and channel link, the scammers sold ads in it under the guise of a real Transformer. Naturally, you shouldn't buy ads in such channels.

Number of the first publication on the channel

Scroll through the channel to the very first publication, then copy the link to this publication to any file or browser line. The last digit in the link is the number of the post on the channel. If the number exceeds several dozen, it is highly likely that the owners changed the topic, or sold the channel to other people who also changed the channel profile.

Advertising in such channels turns out to be ineffective. The old audience is rapidly unsubscribing or hanging on by dead weight, and the proportion of new audiences interested in new content is extremely small. Placing advertisements on such a resource can be unprofitable due to the fact that channel subscribers may have other interests (for example, the channel was about cars, and the new owners changed it to the design topic). The exceptions are those channels where the topic has changed slightly.

Link shorteners + posts with Telegraph

Search for links like bit.ly or goo.gl to estimate the number of clicks on them. You can estimate the statistics of Telegraph posts by sending a link to the article to the @telegraph bot. This way you can easily check the audience activity.

If the number of clicks seems unnaturally low for a given channel, the channel was probably promoted or the audience is inactive, you shouldn't buy ads there. If the number of conversions is small, it may have been some kind of ad that was not suitable for the target audience of the channel, and therefore they did not visit it. In this case, it is worth looking for more links, and if the situation is similar, you should not buy advertising.

Audience growth

Using Tgstat or Telemetr services, look at the subscriber growth graph for the maximum available period of time. This way you can assess the dynamics of the channel's development and find unnatural fluctuations in the graph.

Main conclusions that we can draw from the analysis are as follows:

1. The channel has a constant audience growth and is growing at the moment. This suggests that the author is actively involved in it and it is quite possible to consider it for buying advertising.
2. We see a long unsubscribe time in the graph. Probably the author has stopped developing his channel, and the channel is gradually dying. Such a channel is of lower priority, but it can still be considered for advertising.
3. We notice a sharp increase in the large number of subscribers on the channel. You should track the sources of traffic. If they are not tracked, then we treat the channel with suspicion, it may turn out to be promoted. If this is a regular purchase of advertising, then everything is fine and there is no need to worry.
4. We see a large number of unsubscriptions per day. Most often, these unsubscriptions occur in 2 cases: the channel was promoted and inactive accounts were disabled, or the channel participated in the giveaway and after the competition the uninterested audience unsubscribed. It is not recommended to buy ads in these channels.

Traffic sources

Use Tgstat or Telemetr services to view the mentions of the channel in other channels and compare them with the dates of the audience growth. This will help you understand where the new audience came from and whether all traffic sources can be tracked. If the sources are dubious (or not found at all), you should think about not placing ads in such a channel.

It is important to understand where the traffic from a certain channel came from. Thanks to this information, we will get some idea of the audience subscribed to the channel of interest to us. We can see this by looking at these posting methods: whether it was a regular ad, media mentions, mega or giveaway participation. All this can tell us about the quality of traffic on the channel.

The main conclusions are as follows:

1. All traffic is monitored and nothing is in doubt. You can place advertising.
2. No traffic sources could be found. In such a situation, you should ask the channel owner about this, it may well turn out that the channel is promoted. If the answer is not in doubt and can be verified, then everything is fine and you can purchase ads there. If the answer has not dispelled doubts, then it is better not to use this channel for your ads.
3. We see that subscribers came due to participation in megas. Mega mutual PR is when admins collect links to their channels into a single list and post it on their channels. Mega is considered dubious advertising, the audience from it is inactive and almost does not click on ads. It is not recommended to be advertised on such channels.
4. A significant part of the audience came thanks to the contest (giveaway). Contests are a very subtle tool that many authors don't know how to use. In cases where the giveaway was conducted with channels of one topic or with it the administrator poured his own audience from another resource, everything is fine. But if the giveaway was with channels of very different topics, then most likely it received a non-target audience and it will be inactive.

Coverage by Tgstat or Telemetr

View all-time coverage statistics for these services. Pay attention to sharp drops in views, or lack thereof. Many promoted channels can be tracked if you find posts that have not received views.

Main conclusions from the analysis:

1. No rises/drops are visible, everything is fine. You can place advertising.
2. A sharp drop in views to 0 or below normal. Scroll through the channel until the drop date and view the posts. If we assume that the posts were promoted, then they will remain without coverage or will be deleted. Whether posts have been deleted, we can find out by looking at the numbering of posts in order for a given period of time. If the post has been deleted, find out the post number and open it through Tgstat. To view any (even deleted) post through Tgstat, enter into the link https://tgstat.ru/channel/@channellink/XXXX, where “channellink” is the link to the channel where the post we need was posted and instead of XXXX we write the number of this post on the channel. If the deleted post has no views according to Tgstat, then the channel was probably promoted and we should not place ads there.
3. A sharp drop in views to 0 or below normal, but we did not find deleted posts. Probably, the channel did not publish posts for a long period of time, and then the author resumed the release of the content. After watching the channel in this period of time and confirming this, you can safely post ads there.

Conversion of posts

Using the Tgstat or Telemetr services, look at what resources the channel you are interested in posted in its feed, and then compare the audience growth on the channel on the specified dates.

By tracking the audience growth on the channels by the date of posting, we will see the approximate conversion from the channel we are analyzing, and if we advertise, for example, our channel, we will be able to roughly understand which audience can come to us upon placing ads on this channel. For the most accurate assessment, it is important to evaluate the conversion of several channels placed there.

It is very easy to analyze it with Telemetr. The service already has calculated statistics in the “Ad Placement Efficiency” tab, which shows the amount of gain for the advertised channel, the counting period and the number of sites where the advertised channel was placed during this period.

Feedbacks in chats of channel authors

On Telegram, you can find special chats for channel authors. Join such chats and in the search enter a link to the channel or the author you are interested in. It is highly likely that you will find discussions or feedback about this resource or author in the chat. In addition, you can initiate a discussion yourself by asking other chat members for advice on placing ads on a specific channel.

Main conclusions:

1. Good feedbacks. Consider a channel for advertising.
2. Bad feedbacks. Do not place ads.
3. No feedbacks. Check other criteria.

Black Lists

In Telegram, you can find special chats and channels with black lists of cheated channels and unscrupulous administrators. Join such chats and in the search enter a link to the channel or the author you are interested in. If you find them on the black list, refuse any kind of cooperation. Also, now the TGStat and Telemetr services are flagging some of these channels, so check them there.

This analysis allows us to make sure that the channel is not cheated or the author is dishonest (for example, did not release the advertisement on time or somehow did not comply with the advertising conditions).

About cheated promotion

In addition to the fact that you may stumble upon fake channels with inactive audience, there is a possibility that an unscrupulous administrator or ill-wishers will try to cheat you with bots or fake views. The reasons can be very different:

• Create the appearance of good advertising impact;
• Eliminate a competing channel;
• Cheat with bots to extort money.

If you notice an unnaturally large audience growth, there may be several options.

1. Your channel has been mentioned by someone and you should look for traffic sources. View channel mentions on Tgstat, see internal channel statistics as well as certain posts. In addition, it is worth looking for mentions of links to your channel through Google search, since there is a possibility of mentioning the channel in other places, for example, you were mentioned in the media.
2. Bots are cheating on your channel. We come to this conclusion if we cannot find traffic sources.