Telegram Ads vs. Telegram Influencer Marketing

Every month, Telegram channels receive over a trillion views, and the average post is opened by 55–60% of users. But how do you turn that attention into growth? Do you go for Telegram Ads, built for precision and performance, or influencer marketing, where real voices drive trust and community?

In this guide, we’ll break down both strategies — how they work, what they cost, and how they perform. By the end, you’ll have a clear sense of which strategy (or combination) fits your goals, your audience, and your marketing budget.

• Understanding the Two Strategies
• Cost and Return on Investment
• Performance and Engagement
• Transparency and Control
• When Influencer Marketing Works Best
• When Telegram Ads Are More Effective
• Which Strategy to Choose
• Common Mistakes to Avoid
• Wrapping Up

Understanding the Two Strategies

Let’s have a closer look at both advertising methods and how they can support your marketing goals on Telegram.

What Telegram Ads Are and How They Function

Telegram users spend over 41 minutes on the platform each day. While browsing channels or chatting with bots, they may come across Telegram Ads that are carefully integrated into their experience. Telegram Search is another placement: your channel or bot can appear directly in search results when users type relevant keywords.

Sponsored messages on Telegram contain up to 160 characters (with spaces) and can be enhanced with custom and regular emojis, images, or videos to boost engagement.

Telegram Ads placements

Unlike platforms such as Instagram or TikTok, Telegram doesn’t use algorithms to hide content. This means every message, both everyday and sponsored, reaches its intended audience.

What Telegram Influencer Marketing Is and How It Differs

On the other hand, Telegram influencer marketing relies on real people — creators, channel admins, and KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) — who have built loyal communities around specific interests. Their credibility pays off: people who see ads from trusted voices are 9 points more likely to feel connected to the brand and consider buying. Partnering with Telegram influencers can help your brand achieve instant reach, attract high-quality leads, drive sales, and even boost app installs. 

The Core Distinction

Telegram Ads are paid placements you fully control. Influencer marketing is creator-driven storytelling you help guide. One is automated and data-backed, and the other is emotional and human. Both can work, but the right choice depends on your marketing objectives.

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Let’s compare these two Telegram advertising strategies and see how they stack up across key factors like cost, performance, and control.

Cost and Return on Investment

Telegram Ads operate on a CPM model. You set your budget, which starts at 0.1 Ton (~€0.3), choose placements where to promote your product or offer, and pay only for the number of times your ad is shown. It’s clean, predictable, and scalable — perfect if you prioritize efficiency and measurable outcomes. Influencer marketing, on the other hand, is more variable. Influencers charge based on their audience size, engagement rate, and reputation.

When comparing ROI, it’s not just about how many people you reach — it’s who you reach and how they react. Telegram Ads can deliver large-scale exposure quickly. You might reach millions of potential customers at a relatively low cost per impression. But influencer campaigns often generate stronger engagement, even with smaller audiences, because the connection feels more personal. With a well-executed strategy, Telegram influencer campaigns can deliver returns of more than $6 for every $1 invested.

Performance and Engagement

Telegram Ads are ideal for generating measurable engagement at scale. Every view, click, or conversion is trackable. You can A/B test creatives, adjust targeting, and analyze real-time data to fine-tune results. Take a look at how we managed Telegram Ads for Altery and achieved a lower cost per mini app launch than the average market rate in this category.

Telegram Ads creatives for Altery

Influencer marketing on Telegram works through trust. When followers see a recommendation from a creator they respect, it feels authentic, and the engagement grows naturally. You’ll start noticing engagement or traffic increases within just 2–3 hours of launching your campaign.

Transparency and Control

One of the biggest advantages of Telegram Ads is control. You decide the message, targeting, and duration — and the platform provides clear analytics on impressions, reach, and engagement.

Influencer campaigns are powerful, but they can be harder to measure. You rely on manual tracking or promo codes to assess engagement. Some KOLs offer detailed reports, but there’s still a level of uncertainty.

That’s not necessarily a downside, it’s just a different kind of value. Influencers trade raw numbers for emotional resonance, and that’s something data alone can’t always capture.

When Influencer Marketing Works Best

Influencer marketing on Telegram can be incredibly effective when your goal is to build authentic connections and drive meaningful engagement. To decide if it’s a good strategy for you, it’s important to weigh its pros and cons carefully.

Pros:

• The level of user trust is higher. An influencer’s subscribers cannot always recognize a sponsored post as an ad, which helps build credibility and drives more inquiries and subscriptions.
• More flexibility with content. You can write longer texts, add more photos, videos, and various links to drive engagement.
• Multiple landing page options. Collaborations with influencers allow you to direct traffic to various destinations such as quizzes, product cards, or even Google Forms. The best part? You don’t need to have a website or channel to start generating leads and engagement.
• Opportunity for viral growth. An Influencer’s post can easily spread through groups, chats, and other channels. One well-crafted post can reach far beyond the influencer’s immediate audience.
• Access to Telegram Premium subscribers. These are 15 million people who don’t see official Telegram Ads. This audience is more involved, faster to respond, and more likely to stay loyal in the long run.

Cons:

• Risk of attracting bots. If you haven’t carefully analyzed a channel’s audience and engagement, influencer promotions can bring in many inactive accounts.
• Difficulty in defining the target audience. It can be hard to know whether your target audience is actually present on a channel, and sometimes they make up only a small fraction of its followers.
• Limited visibility. On average, a post stays at the top for only one to three hours. Users might not check the channel all day and could see the post only after five hours.

To sum up, Telegram influencer marketing works for virtually any type of business and any marketing goal. However, simply choosing the most popular KOLs in your niche isn’t enough; you need to evaluate content quality, audience reach, engagement rates, and other key metrics to be sure that genuine, active followers will see and interact with your post.

When Telegram Ads Are More Effective

Telegram Ads is a flexible and scalable marketing platform that can drive results to any niche. 

Pros:

• Broader reach. You can choose any channel for advertising, even those that don’t accept paid collaborations. The only requirement is that the channel has at least 1,000 followers. Besides channels, it is also possible to advertise in Telegram bots.
• Fast to launch. You don’t have to spend days communicating with channel administrators or negotiating post formats. Telegram Ads can be set up quickly and start driving traffic within an hour. On top of that, you can also advertise on your competitors' channels.
• Low entry threshold. Telegram Ads make it easy to start small and experiment. You can launch test campaigns at a relatively low cost to see how your audience responds before scaling up.
• Minimal competition. Few brands are aware of the platform’s potential, so your ads can reach and engage the right audience more easily.
• Decreasing acquisition costs over time. Because ads are data-driven, you can continually optimize them to reduce cost per acquisition and increase ROI.

Cons:

• Limited reach to Premium users. Telegram Premium subscribers don't see ads unless they manually enable them in their account settings.
• Restrictions on channels and bots audience. Telegram Ads can only target channels with more than 1,000 followers and bots with at least 1,000 monthly active users.
• Moderation requirements. All ads go through Telegram’s moderation process before approval, which can delay campaign launches.

Thus, Telegram Ads outperform influencer collaborations where precision, scalability, and control matter. 

Which Strategy to Choose

The choice doesn’t just depend on your niche or product. It largely comes down to your sales funnel and the goals you want to achieve. At Magnetto, we recommend not limiting yourself to one approach but combining both Telegram Ads and influencer partnerships for the best results.

For example, you can start by analyzing specific channels, then run influencer collaborations to test engagement. Once you’ve confirmed that your audience is active on Telegram and gained some initial traction, you can expand your reach and drive engagement with Telegram Ads.

This approach also works perfectly for mass-market products: collaborate with KOLs to boost awareness, then follow up with Telegram Ads to target each audience segment more precisely.

Common Mistakes to Avoid

If you overlook key fundamentals, even the most promising Telegram marketing campaigns can fall flat. Here are a few common mistakes brands often make — and how to avoid them:

Over-reliance on one channel. Even if that channel has a large following, relying too heavily on one source limits your visibility and puts your growth at risk. The best approach is to diversify your presence across multiple communities. Collaborate with several relevant influencers, run ads in different niches, then test which sources bring the highest-quality traffic that converts.

Poor audience targeting or unclear messaging. If your targeting is too broad or your message isn’t relevant to the users, even the best creative won’t perform well. Analyze your audience, define your value proposition clearly, and craft content that speaks directly to their needs and interests.

Lack of consistent monitoring and optimization. Telegram marketing isn’t a “set it and forget it” process. Regularly track performance, analyze engagement metrics, and adjust your creatives or targeting to keep improving ROI. Small tweaks over time often lead to big results.

Wrapping Up

Telegram influencer marketing gives you flexibility, authenticity, and direct access to specific communities where trust already exists. Telegram Ads, on the other hand, help you reach a wider audience, drive targeted traffic, and attract qualified leads with precision. For the strongest results, combine both advertising strategies: let influencers create credibility and conversation at the top of the funnel, then use Telegram Ads to capture that interest, convert users, and sustain growth over time.