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Telegram Ad Platform

promote.telegram.org

121–130 of 256 posts

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#121
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Any Telegram users here? Telegram vs Whatsapp use today is sort of a Shibboleth. Those who only use Whatsapp are typically lax about privacy and security, whereas Telegram users typically take these thing seriously. So those who target the vulnerable are definitely focusing on Whatsapp right now. The self-selection is working very well in Telegram's favour, though that probably is just a happy side effect.

>whereas Telegram users typically take these thing seriously. And yet they don't mind the lack of encryption?

I cannot speak for everybody, but for me the lack of encryption - thus allowing state actors to intercept - is a far better trade off than the explicit sharing of data with advertisers.

Note that I live in a nation in which I support and trust my state. Yet I do not trust advertisers and other entities who seek to influence my opinion. I'm sure that for those who live in states where the government is viewed as adversarial then Signal would be a better choice.

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#122

> Turn off ad blocker > You appear to be using an ad blocker that may prevent pages on the Telegram Ad Platform from working as expected. > Please turn off your ad blocker or add promote.telegram.org as an exception to manage your promoted messages. > Close Oh, well ^^ I was a Telegram user for year until I completely switched to Signal 2.5 years ago. I'd pay 1-10€ a year for a Telegram experience with e2e and withou…

My guess is, because instant messaging only works with multiple people. The usfullness of an IM service is directly coupled to the amount of your peers using it. If there is no one to talk two, why bother?

Sure, you and I may be happy to pay this, and may even fork out the fee for our loved ones, but how many other people would do that?

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#123
post #98
post #7

The minimum spends look ridiculous. >To ensure and maintain high quality of ad content, a minimum advance payment of €2,000,000 is required to launch ads on the Telegram Ad Platform. >Of this payment, Telegram holds €1,000,000 as a deposit, and makes the remaining sum available to the advertiser to spend on displaying ads. >If the contract is terminated and the advertiser spent less than €10,000,000 on ads within the…

> This seems like a solution to Telegram's cashflow problem - doesn't look like it has much runway left. There’s a lot to unpack here. Telegram has plenty of runway left, probably. Pavel Durov is not strapped for cash. That’s just a fact. They’ve been pushing out regular updates with features and other development work that could’ve easily been delayed for the ad platform if it was a priority. They’ve actually deploy…

From earlier this year, WSJ reported[0] telegram raised debt finance, and needed $700M, out of which 500M was just to return to TON investors. The article also quotes Durov as claiming "A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars per year to keep going".

>To pay the bills, Mr. Durov is issuing investors $1 billion to $1.5 billion of company debt, with the promise of discounted equity if the company eventually goes public, the people briefed on the plans said.

>To repay its creditors, Telegram is selling five-year bonds that pay roughly 7% or 8% a year

Durov is rich, but he's not going to spend all his fortune on running Telegram and re-paying these investors. He's also refused to raise money via equity in telegram, so advertising is the only way to keep the lights on telegram.

[0]: https://archive.md/mGtgp

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#124
post #7

The minimum spends look ridiculous. >To ensure and maintain high quality of ad content, a minimum advance payment of €2,000,000 is required to launch ads on the Telegram Ad Platform. >Of this payment, Telegram holds €1,000,000 as a deposit, and makes the remaining sum available to the advertiser to spend on displaying ads. >If the contract is terminated and the advertiser spent less than €10,000,000 on ads within the…

I think that’s typical for a big platform - big ad agency relationship. These conditions are not for regular ad buyer, but for an agency that commits to the volume and re-sells it to businesses.

How about ad-agencies that sell "Telegram Ad-Space"? Wouldn't that be a workaround for the spammers?

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#125
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This seems like a solution to Telegram's cashflow problem - doesn't look like it has much runway left. There’s a lot to unpack here. Telegram has plenty of runway left, probably. Pavel Durov is not strapped for cash. That’s just a fact. They’ve been pushing out regular updates with features and other development work that could’ve easily been delayed for the ad platform if it was a priority. They’ve actually deploy…

> Pavel Durov is not strapped for cash. That’s just a fact. I love Telegram over anything else like others, but I don't think you can say "that's just a fact" unless Durov's finances are public, which as far as I know, they aren't. So yeah, probably he isn't strapped for cash, but that's not a fact, it's a guess.

Forbes quotes his net worth at $17B, the vast majority of which comes from Telegram ownership.

>[..] his wealth increased from $3.4 billion in 2020 to $17.2 billion in 2021. The wealth of Telegram founder increased exponentially recently after the app became popular.

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#126
post #83
post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Matrix is, unfortunately, a UX catastrophe compared to Telegram. Telegram has the best messaging app by UX and it's not even close. It's fast, reliable and it just works. Try getting your mother to use Matrix. Verifying sessions of chat participants is such a disgusting user experience I wonder if they employ /any/ graphic or UX designers.

Matrix is an open protocol and anyone's welcome to build a front-end, inspired by Telegram, that your mother would be happy using. Perhaps you meant the Element client?

This is the kind of gotcha that is not a real argument, just a way to say that the mediocrity of the Matrix (or Element, or Potato, whatever you wanna call it) is okay so no progress is ever made.

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#127
When Facebook acquired WhatsApp I hoped that Telegram will do better, but it's been so many years now and they still don't open source everything and use their homemade cryptography. I find that really unfortunate because the app itself is really great, but not more trustworthy than WhatsApp.

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#128
post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Telegram has much higher infrastructure costs due to their "unlimited size uploads", and channels/groups being non-e2ee = everything is stored forever. Signal could run on benevolence. Telegram's debts were at 770M USD earlier this year. ( https://archive.md/mGtgp )

I think Pavel isn't sweating about 5% of his net worth being tied up in an extremely popular passion project of his. Telegram isn't really just a messenger, it's an anti-censorship system. In fact, Telegram's burn rate would have to increase by roughly 3,000 to 5,000% for it to even make a yearly dent in his fortune, assuming he's invested in any kind of reasonable mix of assets.

If you're using the 17B net worth figure (the one reported by Forbes), it is mostly just based on Telegram's quoted-valuation jumping to 30-40B. A lot of his net-worth is telegram equity at this point, and he's using debt financing to keep telegram operational.

The burn rate was "few hundred million dollars per year", as per Durov a year ago. Telegram has grown 50-60% in users since (350M->550M as per the graph on Wikipedia).

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#129
post #64

Any Telegram users here? I've only ever heard it used when talking about batshit American cults. Not exactly a target audience i want to reach.

It's popular among college students where I live. I guess it initially spread among the the sizeable engineering student body, many of whom found it preferable over a Facebook-owned IM application, but less of a hassle than Signal.

Re: Telegram Ad Platform

#130

> Turn off ad blocker > You appear to be using an ad blocker that may prevent pages on the Telegram Ad Platform from working as expected. > Please turn off your ad blocker or add promote.telegram.org as an exception to manage your promoted messages. > Close Oh, well ^^ I was a Telegram user for year until I completely switched to Signal 2.5 years ago. I'd pay 1-10€ a year for a Telegram experience with e2e and withou…

My guess is, because instant messaging only works with multiple people. The usfullness of an IM service is directly coupled to the amount of your peers using it. If there is no one to talk two, why bother? Sure, you and I may be happy to pay this, and may even fork out the fee for our loved ones, but how many other people would do that?

> Sure, you and I may be happy to pay this, and may even fork out the fee for our loved ones, but how many other people would do that?

I was thinking exactly that while reading the beginning of your post. I'd be ready to accept a part of my fee is to allow others to use the service but it'd need to be balanced so freeloaders don't tip off the balance. Maybe premium stickers packs or some vanity stuff. Or they can `choose` to pay by granting access to their ad profile and marketing tracking ?

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