Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov announced today that the company is launching its ad platform next month, allowing channel owners to receive financial rewards. The company will pay out rewards using toncoin on the TON blockchain. Channel owners will start receiving 50% of all revenue that the company makes from displaying ads in their channels.
Telegram channels allow users to broadcast public messages to large audiences. Durov says that while broadcast channels on Telegram generate one trillion views every month, only 10% of these views are monetized with Telegram Ads, its promotion tool. In March, the Telegram Ad Platform will open to channel owners in nearly one hundred countries, marking a major shift toward content monetization.
The company didn’t provide any specifics about eligibility, but TechCrunch has reached out to learn more.
“To ensure ad payments and withdrawals are fast and secure, we will exclusively use the TON blockchain,” Durov wrote in his announcement post on Telegram. “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.”
The TON token soared nearly 40% to over $2.92 following the immediate release of the news, and is sitting at $2.65 at the time of writing.
With this latest announcement, Telegram will be joining the likes of YouTube and X (formerly Twitter), both of which offer ad revenue sharing with users. YouTube offers a 55% share of ad revenue to creators in the YouTube Partner Program, while X started offering revenue sharing to users in July 2023. Meta also has also been testing a new payout model for its Ads on Reels monetization program.
Telegram has more than 800 million monthly active users around the world, and Telegram users generate over 500 billion views in broadcast channels every month.