New Telegram tools for business and monetization

Over the past two years, Telegram has ceased to be just a messenger. It seeks to compete with media and social networks, turning into a platform for doing business and monetizing content. Experts told Kommersant how new Telegram tools for promotion can be useful for businesses, what is currently preventing them from effectively advertising goods and services in the messenger, and what they expect from this platform in the future.

What’s new in Telegram for business

In 2023, the service focused on improving the user interface and expanding functionality for ease of communication. There are stories (short vertical video stories), a voting system for channels, new options for personalizing profiles, as well as updated mechanisms for replying and quoting in chats. The new system makes chat messaging more organized and simplifies interaction.

In 2024, Telegram introduced a “Telegram for Business” section for iOS and Android users. This gives companies the ability to convert their accounts into business profiles. Users can set up autoresponders, display company location, and add opening hours. Currently, a subscription to Telegram for Business is included in the standard premium; there is no information about the launch of a separate subscription yet.

Telegram is also moving towards supporting content creators: in March, the messenger began offering channel owners the opportunity to receive up to 50% of revenue from advertising placed through its built-in advertising platform. Payments are made in the Toncoin cryptocurrency using the TON blockchain. Considering that today Telegram channels generate about 1 trillion views per month, but only 10% of them display advertising, creators have the potential to monetize content and increase income. Telegram also continues to develop Telegram ADS – this is the official advertising platform of the messenger.

Will this attract business?

Experts say all these changes could signal that Telegram plans to finally distance itself from its traditional messaging competitors and aims to become a direct competitor to media and social platforms such as X (formerly Twitter).

One of Telegram’s main tasks will be to attract advertising investment from businesses.

Experts’ estimates regarding the volume of advertising on Telegram vary, since the channels contain a lot of “native” advertising that is not labeled. Okkam Creative estimates the volume of advertising investment in this channel to be about 40–45 billion per year.

The business entered Telegram several years ago and strengthened its presence there after Instagram (owned by Meta, whose activities in running Facebook and Instagram are recognized as extremist and prohibited) was recognized as an extremist social network, comments Anna Kozyreva, head of the social media marketing department of OMD OM Group. “The ability to respond and quote in chats will allow you to interact more effectively with customers; stories will be convenient for broadcasting the latest brand news without access to the public feed. A brand can communicate not only with its audience of subscribers, but also place advertising blocks in Telegram Ads with a link to its channel, albeit in a limited format,” she says.

All new tools may be of interest to businesses: from direct business accounts to competitions with automatic drawings from the site itself, known to us since the days of Instagram (owned by Meta, whose activities in running Facebook and Instagram are recognized as extremist and prohibited) as “Givas” ( Giveaway,” says Okkam Creative operating director Apollinaria Dvurechenskaya. “Companies will create corporate accounts, but this will happen as special features and exclusive functionality for such accounts grow. Due to the fact that the entry threshold to the site is very easy, we see the representation of absolutely all categories of business on Telegram,” she says.

At the same time, NMi Group Director of Digital Technologies Anna Planina believes that Telegram is more likely aimed at clients from micro and small medium-sized businesses:

“Large businesses have been represented on Telegram for a long time, but players do not develop channels to their full capacity, since there are no image formats on the platform.”

Many companies are already creating corporate accounts; this is a promising direction, she believes.

“Another question is that not all users know how to work with this new tool. Telegram relies on nativeness; branded content is not listed here. And not everyone has the resources to create informative, useful, and most importantly, native content that Telegram loves so much,” says Anna Planina. Direct integrations in channels (seeds) have been and will be in demand, and budgets for them will continue to grow, she predicts. Blogger exchanges are also developing; they are trying to monetize and automate placements in author’s channels, added Anna Planina.

What is currently hindering promotion on Telegram?

Businesses that want to promote themselves on Telegram are still faced with a number of difficulties associated with the messenger’s features, experts say. The process of planning such campaigns is much more complicated compared to other platforms – for example, VK, says Pavel Ignatov, CEO of UM (ADV group). “Text as the main format in Telegram is both a unique feature of the platform and its disadvantage, since this format is not suitable for promoting every brand and not for every task. In addition, at the moment there is not enough accumulated experience to make an unambiguous conclusion about the effectiveness of posting posts and integration in Telegram,” he says. There is no way to sort the flow of messages in subscriptions yet, and there is no familiar news feed. Therefore, brands are still inventing ornate ways to show a message to their potential client, added Anna Kozyreva.

Apollinaria Dvurechenskaya also notes the problem with measuring the effectiveness of advertising: “The main disadvantage of Telegram is the lack of a familiar and transparent social demographic of the audience when placing advertisements. Lack of billing and the ability to use the platform for online trading. Additionally, one can note a shift in emphasis from the visual component of the content to the textual one, although stories partially balance the audience’s demand for visuals.”

“Another difficulty when promoting services through Telegram is the minimum budget in Telegram Ads. It is still a minimum of 1.5 thousand euros. For micro and SME advertisers, this is an obstacle on the way to an advertising tool,” added Anna Planina. In addition, the effectiveness of the platform is debatable: according to NMi Group, only for 24% of those who tried it, Telegram Ads showed results higher than advertising from channel authors. For 42%, the tool, on the contrary, turned out to be less effective.

How can Telegram change?

By according to Mediascope, Telegram already accounts for approximately 27% of consumption of all social networks. In these indicators, the platform currently ranks third, behind VKontakte and TikTok. At the same time, Telegram’s daily coverage is comparable to the leader of VKontakte. The new inventory will attract channel creators, and the audience will follow them, experts predict. They are also waiting for the emergence of new advertising formats, including visual ones, as well as the development of the advertising account. But it’s too early to say that Telegram can become as effective in the context of promoting goods and services as Instagram (owned by Meta, whose activities in running Facebook and Instagram are recognized as extremist and banned) – the platform has “its own path of development,” Anna believes Planina: “The platforms have too different functionality, so it is impossible to compare them.”

Anna Kozyreva expects that Telegram will have more visual formats: “We expect an expansion of Telegram Ads formats, a transition from a text block to a visual one. Among other things, this will help to involve the audience more in the advertising message, and the brand will stand out from the background of numerous similar advertisements.”

Rodnaya Speech is looking forward to expanding opportunities in the Telegram advertising account. “Now, with the advent of stories, we see that Telegram has taken the right path of traffic monetization. It all depends heavily on whether the site wants to develop its advertising account. On Instagram (Meta, a platform banned in Russia), both user and advertising interfaces were harmoniously developed,” added Rodnaya Speech.

Pavel Ignatov, in turn, points to the need to introduce a unified news feed in Telegram. “The development of Telegram as a social network is possible if there is a single news feed/publications configured according to users’ interests or subscriptions. With this functionality, Telegram will be able to attract more people both in Russia and in the world. This is a matter of basic ease of use of the platform, and in this Telegram is now losing to other platforms,” he concluded.

Valeria Lebedeva