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Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

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Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#71

Post by dzonga »

xNeil wrote: post #66
maneesh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hulu once wrote about how, by offering a higher cost plan without ads, they removed a lot of the complaints about their service I've always wondered if FB offered a similar option -- $5 or $10 a month to opt out of all adds and tracking -- if a lot of the complaints about their service would also disappear.

Some did the math - the price Facebook would need to charge every user would be $11 a month. Sorry I can't remember WHERE I read it though.

it's from their quarterly financial reports. rough estimate. for developing markets they generate about 2$ per user. and in developed markets like $7 per user.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#72

Post by ash »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #68

I switched to Telagram from Whatsapp, after the change in privacy update. I've seen a lot of my contacts switch over too. Things I don't like: 1. Low volume during calls 2. The UI needs work. Like for example, I click on my contact messages. To call that contact. I now have to select a ... menu item. Or once I start typing a message, the option to attach photos disappears.

Strange to see people switch from end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp to non-encrypted (by default) Telegram. What do I miss?

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#73

Post by notahacker »

mromanuk wrote: post #11
tw04 wrote: post #2

Do they really need advertisers? I'm not sure why all these companies think the whatsapp route isn't possible. People are happy to pay a small yearly subscription for apps if they're truly doing something useful. While I don't personally use telegram, I'd argue it falls into the category of "useful enough to pay for".

> “A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going” They have 550M MAU, using a freemium model and assuming a 1% payment conversion, that's 5.5M monthly paying users. With a price ranging $1 to $10, that can be $66M ~ $660M ARR, at least they can try.

That envelope maths might explain why they're pinning their hopes on VC FOMO cash injections to explore more speculative revenue generation models.

1% conversion to paid at $120/year sounds high for a consumer-focused app particularly popular in developing countries whose competitors are free and whose competitive advantage is supposed to be that the app doesn't know who you are. And that's apparently less than they need to pay the bills, never mind justify their valuation.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#74

Post by thrwaway-adtech »

vhiremath4 wrote: post #52

What about ads + paid plans with no ads? I feel like that’s a great middle ground for everyone who would delete the app if it had ads. Am I missing something with that thought process?

The problem with this model from the advertisers perspective is the people with disposable income who will pay for your ad free experience are the exact people they want to show the ads to. I don’t know if telegram has this problem, but it’s certainly the problem in most ad + premium models because if I am advertising something like a car, I want the guy who can afford $10/month for her texting app to see my ad more than the people who don’t! Those ads are the most profitable and have the best chance of subsidizing the free users, who you need in your network to keep the paid users.

(Throwaway because I work in ad tech and don’t want this sentiment linked to my employer)

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#75

Post by ex3ndr »

jarito wrote: post #70
vhiremath4 wrote: post #52

What about ads + paid plans with no ads? I feel like that’s a great middle ground for everyone who would delete the app if it had ads. Am I missing something with that thought process?

Once a company starts selling ads, privacy is no longer in their interest. Even paid customers will get lumped in to monitoring and reporting to satisfy / push up ad revenues.

That never was true under Paul's management - ads was just to keep stuff alive.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#76

Post by junippor »

ash wrote: post #72
dukeofdoom wrote: post #68

I switched to Telagram from Whatsapp, after the change in privacy update. I've seen a lot of my contacts switch over too. Things I don't like: 1. Low volume during calls 2. The UI needs work. Like for example, I click on my contact messages. To call that contact. I now have to select a ... menu item. Or once I start typing a message, the option to attach photos disappears.

Strange to see people switch from end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp to non-encrypted (by default) Telegram. What do I miss?

Obviously you're missing that there's more factors to a person's choice than default encryption.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#77

Post by vikbytes »

ash wrote: post #72
dukeofdoom wrote: post #68

I switched to Telagram from Whatsapp, after the change in privacy update. I've seen a lot of my contacts switch over too. Things I don't like: 1. Low volume during calls 2. The UI needs work. Like for example, I click on my contact messages. To call that contact. I now have to select a ... menu item. Or once I start typing a message, the option to attach photos disappears.

Strange to see people switch from end-to-end encrypted WhatsApp to non-encrypted (by default) Telegram. What do I miss?

Presumably the fact that Facebook owns WhatsApp and continues to erode all the "protections" users of WhatsApp initially had from the invasive tentacles of Facebook into their data on WhatsApp.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#78

Post by dimtion »

dukeofdoom wrote: post #68

I switched to Telagram from Whatsapp, after the change in privacy update. I've seen a lot of my contacts switch over too. Things I don't like: 1. Low volume during calls 2. The UI needs work. Like for example, I click on my contact messages. To call that contact. I now have to select a ... menu item. Or once I start typing a message, the option to attach photos disappears.

The UI issues you are mentioning are very minor and have been like that in Telegram for years. I would say that there are different way to present a feature and coming from Whatsapp you are used to one way of doing things.

IMHO Telegram has the best UI and UX of all other "family friendly" chat app.

I do agree on the Voice and Video calls that need more improvement.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#79

Post by spaniard89277 »

perardi wrote: post #60

I quite like Telegram, because I am apparently an old man at the age of 37, and I greatly prefer typing on my real physical keyboard, and not on my phone. Telegram’s desktop client for Mac is great—it’s fast, it has feature parity with mobile clients, and it works . Messages get delivered and stay in sync, and I don’t need to somehow link my phone to my main machine via QR code to act as a gateway. And if they introd…

I would pay. I like Telegram too, for some reason I find myself liking it much more than WhatsApp, it feels snappier, web and desktop Telegram fells nice, and I don't need having my SmartPhone connected. Some time ago it was unthinkable due to network effects, but now many of my peers have Telegram too, even non-tech people.

Re: Telegram is booming but needs advertisers and $700M soon

#80

Post by ign0ramus »

xNeil wrote: post #66
maneesh wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hulu once wrote about how, by offering a higher cost plan without ads, they removed a lot of the complaints about their service I've always wondered if FB offered a similar option -- $5 or $10 a month to opt out of all adds and tracking -- if a lot of the complaints about their service would also disappear.

Some did the math - the price Facebook would need to charge every user would be $11 a month. Sorry I can't remember WHERE I read it though.

That number seems wildly off. Facebook's annual revenue for 2020 was $85.97 Billion[1]. With 2.8 Billion monthly active users, they'd need to charge $3 a month to exceed that number.

[1]: https://investor.fb.com/investor-news/press-release-details/...

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