Telegram, a popular social media platform, has announced its plan to launch an ad platform in March 2024.
Gatekeepers News reports that the objective of this move is to enable channel owners to receive financial rewards for their activities on the platform.
Pavel Durov, the CEO and founder of Telegram, announced this via his Telegram channel on Wednesday.
According to Durov, the company will use toncoin on the TON blockchain to pay out rewards to channel owners. The ad platform will allow channel owners to receive 50% of all revenue generated by Telegram from displaying ads in their channels.
Telegram channels provide a medium for users to broadcast public messages to a large audience. However, only 10% of the one trillion views generated by broadcast channels on Telegram every month are monetized with Telegram Ads, its promotion tool.
Durov in the Telegram post said: “Next month, channel owners on Telegram can start receiving financial rewards from their work.
“Broadcast channels on Telegram generate 1 trillion views monthly. Currently, only 10% of these views are monetized with Telegram Ads — a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind.
“In March, the Telegram Ad Platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries. Channel owners in these countries will start receiving 50% of any revenue that Telegram makes from displaying ads in their channels.
“To ensure ad payments and withdrawals are fast and secure, we will exclusively use the TON blockchain. Similar to our approach with Telegram usernames on Fragment, we will sell ads and share revenue with channel owners in Toncoin.
“This will create a virtuous circle, in which content creators will be able to either cash out their Toncoins — or reinvest them in promoting and upgrading their channels.”
By offering revenue sharing with users, Telegram will be following in the footsteps of other social media platforms such as YouTube and X (formerly Twitter). YouTube offers a 55% share of ad revenue to creators in the YouTube Partner Program. On the other hand, X began offering revenue sharing to users in July 2023. Meta has also been testing a new payout model for its Ads on Reels monetization program.
With over 800 million monthly active users worldwide, Telegram’s ad platform will provide a new opportunity for channel owners to monetize their content and earn financial rewards.
