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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

#131

Post by hardtke »

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".

The Whatsapp route is to get purchased by and subsidized by Facebook. There is no chance the antitrust authorities in the US and Europe will allow something like that to happen again.

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

#132

Post by bennofs »

schoolornot wrote: post #128
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 wish my buddies who are hung up on Signal's E2E, and rightfully so, would at least try Telegram to see what they are missing. An E2E-default version of Telegram would put the final nails in Signal if you ask me. The decision to resist this, and they could implement it fairly beautifully for new devices like iMessage does, and the in-house MTProto protocol do seem kind of bizarre to me. But look how far it's taken t…

Last I tried, telegram desktop on Linux didn't support e2e encrypted chats which is sad.

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

#133

Post by freewilly1040 »

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".

It's unclear what you mean by the WhatsApp route. Their route was getting bought and subsidized by Facebook, and eventually, show ads.

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

#134

Post by corobo »

fsflover wrote: post #35
corobo wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Especially when there's Telegram groups that are charging $10/mo to get into haha. Advertising and privacy don't mix. e: I was wrong, it's $20/mo (wip.co)

> Advertising and privacy don't mix. Targeted advertising and privacy don't mix. Context-based advertising is fine for the privacy. But it may not be fine if you don't like to be manipulated.

How do they track views, clicks and payouts?

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

#135

Post by krisdol »

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?

Ads create a twisted profit incentive that counters what Telegram wants to be, even if Telegram only pursues a privacy-friendly ads experience at first. Sell functionality, storage, customization, or digital assets. I know Discord doesn't _just_ make money off of these things, but that revenue stream is a compatible option for Telegram.

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

#137

Post by newscracker »

Pavel Durov, the CEO of Telegram, has repeatedly said the following on his Telegram channel about ads on Telegram:

- ads will be only on very large public channels and not on all public channels

- there won’t be any ads in chats

- the ads will be contextual, and not based on tracking or profiling users and their activity

- users will be able to opt out of ads

Other monetization options like donations and subscriptions are also in the works.

His channel is at https://t.me/durov

Personally, I wouldn’t mind paying a modest fee for this service.

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

#138

Post by redisman »

grishka wrote: post #111
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?

There will be no ads in the sense you're suggesting.

Ad providers want to target their ads or you'll get the worst performing ads which won't generate much revenue for anyone.

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

#139

Post by Angostura »

schoolornot wrote: post #128
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 wish my buddies who are hung up on Signal's E2E, and rightfully so, would at least try Telegram to see what they are missing. An E2E-default version of Telegram would put the final nails in Signal if you ask me. The decision to resist this, and they could implement it fairly beautifully for new devices like iMessage does, and the in-house MTProto protocol do seem kind of bizarre to me. But look how far it's taken t…

Signal user here, on iOS and using the Mac client. What am I missing?

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

#140

Post by loonster »

dalbasal wrote: post #108
thrwaway-adtech wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Exactly. FB would never do this, and google would never do it for search. It's adverse selection. Spotify is a good example. The ad supported version has uses: it's a funnel for paid users, a deterrent to competition, a data farm, etc. Making money is not one of those uses. I suspect that this is because the best advertisers audience subscribes. Also, opt out ads also harms your upside. EG, fb make more in ad revenue…

As a user, I'm wouldn't want my searches to be ad-free. Companies pay good money to put their ads there, and they may outperform the search algorithms.

Practices I don't like: - Making sponsored searches look like regular searches. - Pay to Play, where your content gets demoted if not a paid subscriber (Thinking of a non-google websites here).

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