What is Telegram Ads — complete 2026 guide

Telegram Ads is the only official advertising platform inside the Telegram messenger. Launched by Telegram FZ-LLC in 2021 and gradually expanded over five years, the platform now ships in three parallel cabinets — euro, Gram and Stars — that all serve the same sponsored messages but differ in how you get in, how you pay and how you can target.

#Who runs Telegram Ads

The platform is operated by Telegram, and every creative is reviewed by Telegram moderation before going live — typical wait is 1–4 hours. How you get a cabinet depends on how you pay: the euro cabinet is sold through authorised resellers (a direct contract is only for very large advertisers), the Gram cabinet is self-serve at **ads.telegram.org**, and the Stars cabinet spends the Stars balance of a channel or bot you own.

#The three official cabinets

Each cabinet targets a different buyer type:

• **Euro cabinet** — the classic cabinet most brands mean by "Telegram Ads". You buy it through a reseller: entry starts at €250–500, and resellers put a direct contract with Telegram at around €2 million, of which €1 million is a deposit — Telegram itself does not publish these numbers (eLama, Click.ru). Targeting is the richest of the three: country, language, interests, channels, bots, search and retargeting. Accounts for roughly a third of creatives in the Telegram Ads Spy archive — the Gram cabinet carries the larger share. Use for: B2C launches, mass-market apps, regional campaigns.
• **Gram cabinet (formerly the TON cabinet)** — self-serve, paid in Gram (GRAM, formerly Toncoin), the coin of the TON network renamed on 15 June 2026 (@gram). You top it up through Fragment from a TON wallet. Targeting is explicit lists only — channels, bots and search keywords, no geo and no interests. Use for: fast, cheap tests of crypto and Telegram-native products when you know which channels your audience reads.
• **Stars cabinet** — spends the Stars balance of your own channel or bot on ads for that same channel or bot, and only for it. One Star buys $0.02 of ad credit, a 30% discount against the $0.013 it pays out when withdrawn (Telegram API). Use for: growing a channel or bot that already earns Stars.

See the long-form comparison at /wiki/eur-vs-ton-vs-stars for when to pick each.

#What an ad looks like

A Telegram sponsored message is a short text (up to ≈160 characters), an optional banner image, and a CTA button pointing to a channel, bot, account or external website. Ads serve at the bottom of qualifying channels, in bots and in search — they are clearly labelled and separated from organic content. Targeting is not purely contextual any more: the euro cabinet targets by country, language and interests, and since 28 August 2026 ads.telegram.org's privacy promise is narrower — it does not use the contents of your private chats or contact lists for ad targeting (ads.telegram.org).

#How much it costs

Telegram publishes one price floor and nothing else: a minimum CPM of 0.1 — the getting-started page still writes "0.1 Toncoin", the coin's name before it became Gram. Everything above it is demand. In the euro cabinet resellers quote minimum CPMs of €0.30–0.75 for advertisers from Russia since 28 August 2026, depending on targeting (eLama). Third-party estimates put crypto channels in the TON (now Gram) cabinets at as low as $0.5–1.5 CPM and overall Telegram Ads CPMs at $0.5–6 depending on niche and geo (ADSLY, 2026-04). We do not measure CPM ourselves — cost is never exposed to third parties.

#Where to see what's running

The Telegram Ads Spy archive indexes every creative across all three cabinets — searchable by niche, geo, advertiser and time. Updated every 30 seconds. Free, CC-BY-4.0.

#What's next

If you are planning to launch: see /wiki/how-to-launch-telegram-ads. If you are researching the market: see /wiki/top-niches-2026. If you want G.Media to run campaigns for you: g.media.