Telegram Ads for crypto projects: the official platform vs the networks selling Telegram placements

Every crypto ad network now has the word Telegram somewhere on its homepage, and every second agency sells “Telegram ads” as a line item. Behind the word sit five different products: sponsored messages bought from Telegram, directly or through a reseller; banners inside Telegram mini apps, sold by ad networks; posts bought from channel owners through a marketplace; the same posts bought through Telegram’s own suggested-posts feature; and social posts bundled into PR packages. They cost different money and obey different rules, and only the first is what Telegram calls Telegram Ads. We read Telegram’s ad platform pages, terms and API documentation, the pages of the networks and marketplaces selling the rest, and archived copies of both, on 27 September 2026. Every number below is quoted from those pages, and we have no stake in any of them.

What Telegram actually sells: 160 characters, a button and a Telegram-only link

The landing page at ads.telegram.org opens with a claim and an invitation: “Every month, 1 billion Telegram users generate 1 trillion views in public broadcast channels,” and “Anyone can post ads on Telegram — using this platform.” You log in with a phone number and confirm inside the app. The product is a sponsored message: a title, up to 160 characters of text and a URL that becomes a button. The guidelines allow one extra link inside the text, as @name or t.me/name, and it must lead where the button leads.

Where the button can go is the first thing a crypto project needs to know. Telegram’s getting-started guide says it in one sentence: “All links included in the Text and URL field must link to a channel or bot on Telegram, using the format t.me/link or @link. Links to external sites are not allowed.” Yet the rulebook still legislates for websites: section 4.2 of the guidelines bans “inactive, expired and inaccessible websites”, pages “under construction” and pages behind a paywall. The resellers explain the contradiction. Adsgram’s guide to campaigns placed through its account has a “site name” field “in case of external link is entered”, its moderation page lists “External Sites: Direct links to websites” among approved formats, and Telega.io sells “access to official Telegram Ads through EURO accounts”. There are two doors into the same auction: the self-serve one, paid in Gram, which targets channels and links only to Telegram, and the reseller one, paid in euros or stablecoins, which targets users by country and language and can link to a website. Telegram publishes no list of resellers, so every “official reseller” badge is the seller’s own claim.

The inventory is wider than “channels with 1,000+ subscribers” suggests. Telegram’s API documentation describes four placements: sponsored messages “below all other posts in the channel”, an ad bar “above the chat” in a bot, text-only ads in “a small box on the video player”, and “sponsored peers” inserted into global search results. None of it reaches Telegram Premium subscribers: Telegram’s FAQ calls the ads “minimalist, non-targeted advertisements” that “will be hidden for users that subscribe to Telegram Premium”, and adds that a channel admin’s promotional post “would still appear for Premium users”, the one structural argument for buying a post instead of an ad.

Pricing is an auction on CPM. “The minimum CPM for a sponsored message is 0.1 Toncoin,” says the guide; at the coin’s price on 27 September that is about $0.16 or €0.14 per thousand views, and the terms reserve Telegram’s right to change the minimum at any time. A budget can be raised but never lowered (“stop and delete the ad” is the official advice, and the remainder returns to your balance, not your wallet), targeting “can’t be changed” after creation, and review comes with no clock at all: “The Company shall not be bound by any time frames in conducting a review.” The statistics tab reports views and the number of users who joined the channel or started the bot, the only conversion the platform can see. On the other side of the trade, channel owners get “a 50% share of the revenue Telegram earns”, a share the creator terms call “voluntary” and “subject to change at any time without notice”, and owners who reach boost level 50 can switch ads off for their whole channel, so the subscriber floor tells you where ads can run, not which channels still allow them.

The TON that became Gram

The platform was not born as a crypto product. The archived getting-started page from December 2023 set the minimum CPM at €2; the March 2024 update announced “a new type of ads, which users can purchase with Toncoins” and promised that “anyone can now promote their bot or channel — with budgets as low as a handful of Toncoins.” That coin no longer answers to the name. An on-chain vote proposed by Telegram itself ran from 1 to 8 June 2026, and wallets and exchanges were asked to switch name, ticker and logo at 12:00 UTC on 15 June. The archived copy of ads.telegram.org from 3 June reads “You can pay for your ad with TON”; the live page reads “You can pay for your ad with Gram”, and the word TON is gone from it. CoinGecko listed “Gram (prev. Toncoin)”, ticker GRAM, at $1.58 and €1.38 on the morning we checked, 81% below its high of $8.25 on 14 June 2024. Ton.org now calls Gram “the native coin of the TON blockchain”, Pavel Durov’s channel announced “a native non-custodial Gram wallet” for every Telegram app on 21 July, and Telegram’s getting-started guide has not caught up: it still quotes the minimum in Toncoin.

Why a crypto advertiser should care is arithmetic, not branding. Funding goes “Budget » Add Funds on Fragment”, where the instructions are to install a TON wallet, buy Grams “on a crypto exchange such as OKX or ByBit — or using your bank card”, and connect the wallet. Your budget is then denominated in an asset that moved from $8.25 to $1.58 in two years, and every dollar figure a reseller attaches to a Telegram CPM has an expiry date. Bitmedia’s guide to the platform prices the minimum at “0.1 Toncoin ($0.5 per 1,000 views)”; at the price on the day we checked, the same bid is $0.16. Adsgram’s documentation records that its own network “switched from the TON currency to USD₮” on 23 September 2024 “at the exchange rate of 5.7 USD₮ per 1 TON”, which tells you what the coin was worth then and why an intermediary that bills in stablecoins has an argument.

What the rulebook says about crypto: nothing, and quite a lot

Telegram’s Ad Policies and Guidelines do not contain the words cryptocurrency, token, blockchain or NFT. There is no certification, no country list and no licence requirement for the category, the opposite of what our Google crypto ads explainer documents. What the guidelines do contain will still disqualify a large share of crypto campaigns. Section 5.6 bans “online or offline gambling, gaming, or casino-based activities involving real money”, down to “fantasy sports” and “tips, odds, forecasts”, which closes the door on casinos, sportsbooks and any prediction market that pays out. Section 5.7 bans “offers of investment with guaranteed return, claims on providing insider tips on investments”, and “concealing or masking significant information about the promoted paid product, such as fees, terms, payment deadlines”. Section 5.4 bans “exaggerated comparisons and absolute claims”, including “best company” and “comparing your brand to a different one”. A promoted channel also needs “at least one post published within the two weeks prior to review”, a profile image and a description.

The terms of service add the discretion. Telegram may request “the relevant licenses/permits/certificates for licensed goods/services” and the advertiser’s “constitutional documents, tax numbers, residency”, suspending service until satisfied, and may stop ads “inconsistent with the Company’s values and principles”. Adsgram, which sees the rejections of every campaign it places, condenses the practice into a line Telegram’s own text never states: its moderation guide for the platform lists “trading ‘signals,’ and unlicensed cryptocurrency offers” as prohibited, along with “any promises of specific earnings”, and asks that the promoted channel have “a minimum of 100 subscribers”, “400+ is recommended for smoother moderation”. Treat that as the working rule: an exchange, a wallet, a protocol or a news channel with a real licence or no need for one can advertise; a signals group or an “earn 3% a day” bot cannot.

Then there is the money. Section 4.3 of the terms: funds on the balance “are considered advance-paid advertising credits”, and “for clarity, this means that unspent Balance cannot be withdrawn by the Advertiser, transferred to a different Account, or refunded.” Section 4.4: after “three years of continuous Inactivity” the remainder “will be emptied and considered as Company revenue”. The counterparty is Telegram Messenger Inc, the agreement “is governed by English law”, and Telegram’s total liability is capped at what you spent in the previous calendar year. That is a harder clause than most of the networks in our refund-policy comparison, inside a platform whose review has no deadline, so a declined campaign leaves you with credits and no way out except an ad that passes.

The resellers: Adsgram, Telega.io, eLama, and Telegram’s own post market

Adsgram is “AdsGram Ltd incorporated and registered in The Republic of Seychelles”, according to its privacy policy, and support is a Telegram handle. Its guide to launching “a Telegram Ads Campaign via AdsGram” states the entry price plainly: “The minimum budget for launching the first campaign for a new region (Users) or language (Channels) is 500 USDT. This amount will be reserved on your balance”, released “within 24 hours” if the campaign is declined and reserved again for each further region or language. The CPM “must be at least 1 USDT”, moderation takes “24 – 48 hours on business days”, and the formats Telegram’s self-serve pages never mention come as surcharges: a photo adds 50% or 80% to the CPM, a video 70% or 100%, and naming specific channels “increases CPM”. Adsgram’s own network is the more interesting product for anyone with a website: ads in “Mini Apps, channels, bots, and alternative clients”, “74 countries”, “15M+ daily impressions”, bought on CPM, target CPC or target CPA, and targeted by “interface language, countries, VPNs, premium Telegram, TON wallet” ownership, a signal no display network can offer. “There are no minimum deposit budgets at the moment,” its documentation says of that network, and its terms read: “Except as required by law, all paid fees are non-refundable.”

Telega.io, “operated under the laws of the United Arab Emirates”, sells the other thing people mean by Telegram ads: a post in somebody’s channel, priced by format, “1/24” being one hour at the top and 24 hours in the feed. On 27 September its cryptocurrency section listed a 988,000-subscriber news channel at $720 for a 1/24 post, $10.13 per thousand views on the catalogue’s own cost-per-view figure, a 458,000-subscriber one at $480, a 118,000-subscriber one at $144, and a 36,300-subscriber giveaway channel at $1.20; across the section the cost per thousand views runs from under $1 to about $17. The rules take “a Depositing Service commission” of 15% “(but not less than $0.85)” from the advertiser and 12.5% from the owner’s price on every completed order, and charge an advertiser who places no order in a calendar month “$12 for each such month”. The FAQ promises a full refund “if your ad is not posted or deviates from your specified requirements”, with the money “returned to the balance in your account” if the order is not fulfilled within 60 hours. Telega also sells the official auction as a managed service: “$1,000.00” for a “reach of 300,000 views”, about $3.33 per thousand.

The crypto surcharge is easiest to see where a reseller prints it. eLama, a Russian agency selling the euro accounts in “more than 35 countries”, quotes a first top-up “from €366” for an ordinary advertiser and €811.30 for one “from the cryptocurrency sphere”, because the fee rises to 33% and the minimum first top-up to €500; its country table adds that in several markets “you cannot show ads in cryptocurrency channels, or exclude them”. The middleman is where the crypto rules live.

Telegram has also entered the channel-post trade itself. Since July 2025 any user can send a channel a “suggested post” with an offer attached: “you may offer Telegram Stars or Toncoin to the owner in exchange for posting the message.” The owner is paid 24 hours after publishing, “if the post is removed earlier, Telegram will automatically return the full amount to you”, and the client configuration gives the channel 85% of the price. It is the only route on this page where the refund is automatic and the escrow is the platform’s, and the price is whatever the two of you agree.

The crypto ad networks selling “Telegram”

Bitmedia (6.5/10) lists “Telegram ads” among its formats and a “Telegram Communities” card in the influencer marketplace it added in March 2026, next to X influencers and YouTube channels. What it sells is channel posts and mini-app inventory: its case study describes a mini app that “monetized with static banners” for “$3K+ in 4 months”, and its own guide to the official platform walks advertisers to ads.telegram.org, pricing the minimum at “0.1 Toncoin ($0.5 per 1,000 views)” and crediting the platform with “demographic targeting – based on age, gender, language, and location”, which Telegram’s own FAQ contradicts. It publishes no Telegram rate card; the $300 deposit in our review applies to the network, not to a channel post.

Blockchain-Ads (4.5/10) has a dedicated page: “100M+ daily impressions inside Telegram mini apps”, “90+ active mini apps in network”, “10-20x higher CTR than web display”, and the price of the door: “Self-service accounts start at a $10,000 deposit and managed service at $30,000, with a $360 daily budget minimum.” The way in is the one our review describes: “Start by requesting access. Your company goes through qualification and compliance review.” The reach and CTR figures are the company’s own.

Coinzilla (9/10) sells no Telegram ad unit at all. Telegram appears in its packages as a social add-on: the KOL Spotlight “Starter” tier at €1,999 promises “6 Social Media posts”, “X and Telegram posts included (where available)”, “1 video review” and an “estimated audience” of 401,000+. “Where available” is doing real work in that sentence; the channels are not named before you buy. Cointraffic (7.5/10) lists “even YouTube and Telegram placements” in its marketplace, behind a login, with no public Telegram price. A-ADS (7/10) mentions Telegram only as a way to reach support.

TrafficSigma (3.5/10) made Telegram its headline format when we reviewed it on 9 September: playable ads at $6–8 CPM, interstitial video at $6–14, embedded banners at $1–2, and daily volumes that disagreed with its own homepage by a factor of fifty. On 27 September that page, and every other page of trafficsigma.com, returned Cloudflare’s “DNS points to prohibited IP” error, a configuration failure on the site’s own side, on each of three checks from two countries. At the time of writing there is nowhere on the site to buy a Telegram placement, or anything else.

Side by side

Route	Who you pay	Minimum	Price signal	Link to a website?	Unspent money
Official sponsored messages, self-serve	Telegram Messenger Inc, via ads.telegram.org and Fragment, in Gram	None published; 0.1 Toncoin minimum CPM	About $0.16 per 1,000 views floor, auction above it	No: channel or bot only	Non-refundable, forfeited after 3 years idle
Official auction via a reseller	Adsgram (Seychelles), Telega.io (UAE), eLama (Russia), in USDT, dollars or euros	500 USDT reserved per region or language at Adsgram; $1,000 at Telega; €811.30 for crypto at eLama	1 USDT minimum CPM at Adsgram, plus 20–100% for media; $3.33 per 1,000 views at Telega	Yes, through the reseller’s account	Adsgram: reserve released within 24 h if declined, paid fees non-refundable
Mini-app ads	Adsgram’s network, Blockchain-Ads, Bitmedia	None at Adsgram; $10,000 deposit and $360 a day at Blockchain-Ads; $300 at Bitmedia	CPM, target CPC or CPA; TrafficSigma’s $1–14 CPMs are offline with its site	Yes	Each network’s own terms
Channel posts via a marketplace	Channel owners through Telega.io, or Bitmedia’s marketplace	One post: $1.20 to $720 per 1/24 in Telega’s crypto section	Under $1 to about $17 per 1,000 views; 15% deposit fee plus 12.5% owner fee	Yes	Refund to balance if the post is not made within 60 hours
Suggested posts, official	The channel owner, through Telegram, in Stars or Gram; the channel keeps 85%	Whatever the owner accepts	Negotiated per post	Whatever the post contains	Automatic full refund if the post comes down within 24 hours
Social posts inside a PR package	Coinzilla KOL Spotlight	€1,999 package	6 posts, “X and Telegram posts included (where available)”	Yes	Coinzilla’s terms: all amounts non-refundable

The bottom line

Telegram built the most transparent ad product in crypto marketing and then priced it in a coin that fell 81% and renamed itself between one archived page and the next. The rules are public, short and silent on cryptocurrency; the money is Gram, non-refundable, and on the self-serve door only ever buys a Telegram destination. To grow a channel or a bot, use that door: name the channels, bid from 0.1 Toncoin, watch the joins count, and keep the budget small enough that a declined ad or a swing in Gram does not hurt. To send people to a website, you are choosing between a reseller’s 500 USDT or €811.30 entry, Adsgram’s stablecoin-billed mini-app network with no minimum, Blockchain-Ads’ $10,000 deposit, and a channel post whose price you can see in advance, the KOL trade from our prediction-market promotion guide under another name. Everyone selling “Telegram ads” who is not Telegram is selling access, inventory or somebody’s channel, with a commission and a refund clause of their own on top, which is neither a scandal nor a bargain: it is the price of a website link. When any network in our ranking says Telegram, ask which of the five it means before you pay; the word covers a €0.14 sponsored message and a €1,999 bundle with equal ease.

Telegram Ads for crypto projects FAQ

Can crypto projects run official Telegram Ads in 2026?

Yes. Telegram’s Ad Policies and Guidelines contain no clause about cryptocurrency, tokens or exchanges. They prohibit gambling in every form, “offers of investment with guaranteed return”, “insider tips on investments”, concealed fees, superlatives and comparisons with other brands, and Telegram may demand licences and company documents at its discretion. Adsgram’s moderation guide for the platform lists “trading ‘signals,’ and unlicensed cryptocurrency offers” as what gets rejected in practice. That silence is unusual: Meta, X, TikTok and Reddit each publish a cryptocurrency clause, compared in our social platforms policy guide.

What is the minimum budget for Telegram Ads?

Telegram publishes no minimum top-up; the published floor is the minimum bid, “0.1 Toncoin” per thousand views, about $0.16 on 27 September 2026, and the 2024 announcement promised budgets “as low as a handful of Toncoins”. Through a reseller the floor is theirs: Adsgram reserves 500 USDT for the first campaign in each region or language, Telega.io’s managed package is $1,000, and eLama’s first top-up for a crypto advertiser is €811.30.

Can a Telegram ad link to my website?

Not from the self-serve platform. Telegram’s guide says all links “must link to a channel or bot on Telegram” and “links to external sites are not allowed”. Through a reseller’s euro account, yes: Adsgram’s moderation guide approves “direct links to websites”, and its campaign form has a field for the site name. Mini-app networks and channel-post marketplaces link wherever you like, because they are not Telegram’s product.

How much does a post in a crypto Telegram channel cost?

On Telega.io’s catalogue on 27 September 2026, a 1/24 post, one hour pinned at the top and 24 hours in the feed, ran from $1.20 in a 36,300-subscriber giveaway channel to $720 in a 988,000-subscriber news channel, which the catalogue’s own figures put at under $1 to about $17 per thousand views. Add Telega’s 15% deposit commission; the owner gives up another 12.5%. Telegram’s own suggested posts cost whatever the channel owner accepts, with the channel keeping 85%.

Are Telegram Ads refundable?

No. Section 4.3 of the Telegram Ad Platform terms says unspent balance “cannot be withdrawn by the Advertiser, transferred to a different Account, or refunded”, and section 4.4 forfeits it after three years without activity. Deleting an ad returns its remaining budget to your balance, not to your wallet. Intermediaries differ: Adsgram releases its 500 USDT reserve within 24 hours if Telegram declines the campaign but calls paid fees non-refundable, Telega.io returns the price of an unpublished post to your balance after 60 hours, and a suggested post bought through Telegram is refunded in full if the channel deletes it within 24 hours.

Reviewed in full

• Blockchain-Ads 4.5/10

  The biggest claims in crypto advertising — behind a $10,000 door and a 2.7-star record.

• Bitmedia 6.5/10

  The Web3 ad veteran with deep targeting — and a thinning footprint on premium crypto media.

• TrafficSigma 3.5/10

  Push, pop and Telegram Mini App marketing site with model paperwork and no platform we could verify; offline since late September 2026

• Coinzilla 9/10

  The default choice in crypto advertising — quietly displacing older rivals.

• Cointraffic 7.5/10

  Premium crypto inventory and the friendliest payouts in the niche — three doors in, from €500 marketplace to €3,000 managed.

• A-ADS 7/10

  The 2011 original — still anonymous, still cookie-less, still paying in BTC every day.