Although this announcement may come as a surprise to some, Telegram’s founder Pavel Dorov publicly shared the plan to introduce ads on the platform in December 2020. As Dorov explained then, he backed Telegram financially for the past 7 years and the growth of the user base is pushing the project to find additional sources of revenue if it wants to remain free for all.
Only public channels with over 1,000 users will be eligible for this, and the ads will NOT be targeted, which means that users will not be profiled by tracking their clicks and preferences. Finally, to ensure that the sponsored messages are not obstructive and don’t degrade the user experience on the platform, they will be limited to 160 characters.
It does seem to be the best option for Telegram to be sustainable as a free-to-use platform for its users, without passing user metadata to advertisers, or letting ads invade private chats or channels.
See Telegram launches advertising program for public channels
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Telegram has launched a new advertising program dubbed Ad Platform and offering the opportunity to display sponsored messages on the instant-messaging platform.