a cheap way to close the gestalt for those who are late with Insta, VK and Yandex Direct
Hello, this is Vlad Silantiev, founder of the advertising agency Tg Ads. I want to hurry you up a little with the launch of advertising on Telegram.
In a good way, we are already late with Telegram too. The ideal time to rock channels was a couple of years ago. But you can still figure out how Tg Ads works and bring subscribers at an adequate price. Otherwise, in another year we will remember this time with sadness – just as we now remember subscribers on VKontakte for 50 kopecks.
How advertising pricing works and why Tg Ads is still cheap
Telegram Ads is Telegram’s internal advertising account. If you run an ad in it, a block with your creative appears under the last post in different channels – I’ll tell you how to select them a little later. Using this link, subscribers will be able to go to your channel and even to an external website.
Now, in February 2024, CPM (Cost per mile or cost per thousand impressions) in Telegram is approximately 350 rubles. It is cheap. For example, prices for advertising in Yandex Direct or VKontakte have already inflated so much that in the first months after launch it can simply work to zero – it’s not easy to achieve payback.
CPM ~ 350 ₽ including VAT
Why are prices per impression constantly rising?
Let me explain how prices rise. Advertising prices are based on an auction principle – those who pay the most are shown more often. So prices for impressions are always rising: some rates outbid others.
Conventionally, if there were only two advertisers working on the site, they would take turns raising the bid by 1 kopeck. And if there are 1000 advertisers, during the same time the price of advertising will increase instead of 1 kopeck by 10 rubles – each of them will increase the rate.
Compared to VKontakte or Yandex Direct, there are still not many advertisers on Telegram, so the price per view is relatively low and rises slowly. But it’s better not to delay the launch of advertising – new advertisers come from other social networks to Telegram every day.
A universal move to Telegram is inevitable
High prices on other platforms force advertisers to come to Telegram. This is an inevitable process of business migration from site to site – like overpopulation. Advertisers leave because of the high price, but by appearing they raise prices in a new location.
Competition for the attention of subscribers is also growing: in 2023, average daily coverage on Telegram increased from 47.2 million to 56.9 million – this is more than on VKontakte and even on YouTube. After Telegram also experiences an overpopulation, a new trend will appear. But for now this is an adequate option for advertising.
You can still gain subscribers quickly and inexpensively – for example, in the last article I told how we got 24,000 subscribers from scratch at an average price of 48.7 rubles.
There are several other factors why many people now go to Telegram. Someone is worried that Instagram will be blocked after all, so we need to have time to transfer part of the audience. Stories appeared on Telegram, and users began to spend more time there. Most likely, advertisements will be shown between stories over time. While it's still new, early advertisers have a better chance of being remembered.
Why the entry threshold for launching Tg Ads is profitable, although such amounts sound scary for a test
Most often, the advertising account on sites is structured like this: you need to deposit money into your account, and it will gradually be spent on impressions. In VKontakte or Yandex Direct there are no restrictions on how much you can run an advertisement with – literally, you can try to put “as much as you have” into your personal account.
Tg Ads has a minimum threshold to start. If you work without an intermediary, it costs 2 million euros – few people could afford it. But there are resellers who allow you to enter Tg Ads from 1500 euros. For this they charge a commission of 15-30%, depending on the niche. If the advertiser's business is in Russia, you will need to pay VAT – 20%. It turns out that you can start running advertising with an amount of approximately 2,000 euros.
This may sound scary, but it's actually a big benefit. If the entrance fee was from 1000 ₽, everyone who thought of it would be advertised. As you remember, according to the auction principle, the more advertisers, the higher the impression price. So the threshold of 2,000 euros still protects entrepreneurs from high advertising prices.
Entry threshold protects against high advertising prices
Important: if someone has not worked with advertising accounts before, you can imagine that all these 2,000 euros need to be spent on launching one specific creative. But this is not at all necessary. Usually, with this money you can conduct a sufficient number of tests to select the best creatives and launch hundreds of advertising campaigns based on successful options.
Why Tg Ads no longer looks boring
At first glance, you might think that Tg Ads don’t have much chance of attracting the attention of subscribers – the advertising blocks look about the same. And we all already have banner blindness, so readers can only notice something special.
To make people react to Tg Ads, Telegram is adding new tools. For example, now you can add a channel avatar, picture or emoji to the tiles and change the background of the ad.
All these visual details increase CTR – conversion to clicks from impressions, that is, subscribers notice the advertisement and click on it.
Three new ways to find an audience in Tg Ads that was more expensive for someone
Besides the fact that Tg Ads are basically inexpensive now, there are several other ways to quickly select the right audience for impressions and save money.
Here's the bottom line: It's important that your ads are shown to the “right” people who could potentially be interested in them. Otherwise, the money for impressions will be wasted. Of course, you can conduct many tests to select an audience, but each test is also a waste of money. You can’t do without tests completely, but you can save money. And so far these methods are working.
Run ads to subscribers of a specific channel
At the same time, it may appear in completely different places. Popular channels have a higher cost per impression than smaller ones. But usually it is not important for an advertiser to appear in a large channel – you can simply catch up with his audience in a smaller channel.
Example
An entrepreneur wants to advertise a delivery service in his city. There is a poster channel in the city with a large number of subscribers. Shows there are expensive. An entrepreneur can run an advertisement for his delivery to the same people in cheaper channels – for example, someone will see it in the “Morning Joggers Club”, which has only 1000 subscribers and impressions are cheap.
Target by several interests at once
One of the options for choosing who to show ads to is targeting by interests. But if you set only one parameter, you may end up with a lot of untargeted impressions. Money for them will be written off just like that – without transitions. To narrow down the selection for impressions, you can set several interests at once in Tg Ads.
Example
The School of Languages has developed a business English course. It launches advertising to users with the interest “Foreign languages”. This is not very effective: impressions are spent on schoolchildren who are subscribed to groups to prepare for the Unified State Exam, or on travelers who learn the minimum necessary for communication. But if you specify the interests “Foreign languages”, “Business”, “Marketing & PR”, there will be more targeted impressions.
Run ads in similar channels
Recently, an automatic selection of “Similar Channels” appeared in Telegram. If a person is interested in a topic, he now does not have to look for more channels on it himself – he can simply click on the selection and see what options Telegram itself offers.
The same principle can be used to set up advertising – specify channels similar to yours or any other desired one for display.
Example
A marketing agency can show its advertising on the channels of other agencies – in case their subscribers are still choosing a contractor or want to try different options. And now you don’t even need to search for these competitors manually.
*Meta, which owns Instagram and Facebook, is recognized as an extremist organization in Russia
