OBSERVED · CABINET CAPABILITIES
What each Telegram Ads cabinet supports
The documentation tells you what is permitted. This page tells you what is used: we parsed the CTA link of every ad in the archive and counted which link types actually occur in the Gram cabinet (formerly the TON cabinet) and the EUR cabinet. That gives a direct answer to the question asked most often about bots — where the start parameter works.
The short answer
The start parameter works in both cabinets
It is not exclusive to one rail: deep links of the t.me/username?start=... shape come out of both the Gram and the EUR cabinet, and in both they almost always point at a bot.
- Gram cabinet
- 45,376 creatives from 4,893 advertisers
- EUR Ads Cabinet
- 16,106 creatives from 1,684 advertisers
The real difference is external links
The cabinets diverge not on start but on whether the button leaves Telegram at all. In the EUR cabinet external links are common practice; in the Gram cabinet we practically never observe them.
- Gram cabinet
- 6 ads leaving Telegram · 0.001% of the cabinet
- EUR Ads Cabinet
- 30,864 ads leaving Telegram · 22.3% of the cabinet
Where the ad button leads
Breakdown by CTA link type. Shares are computed against each cabinet’s own creative total, not against the whole archive.
| Link type | Gram cabinet | EUR Ads Cabinet |
|---|---|---|
| t.me, no parametera channel, bot or chat with no data in the link | 543,80791.1% | 89,73964.8% |
| ?start=deep link: the bot receives the parameter with /start | 45,3767.6% | 16,10611.6% |
| startappstraight into the mini-app, skipping the bot chat | 7,5011.3% | 1,7501.3% |
| external URLleaves Telegram | 60.001% | 30,86422.3% |
| invite link t.me/+a cut inside t.me links, not a fifth category | 37,1516.2% | 13,96710.1% |
The first four rows are disjoint and add up to the whole cabinet: every ad falls into exactly one. start= and startapp are only counted on t.me links — an external redirector carrying start= in its query counts as an external link, otherwise the buckets would stop adding up. The invite row is a slice of the parameterless t.me links and must not be added to the rest.
Where start leads
The start parameter is barely used for channels — it is a bot-traffic instrument. We count a link as bot-bound when the target username ends in "bot": Telegram enforces that suffix on bot usernames, so the signal is reliable in the common case, but a bot whose name does not end in "bot" is missed. Read the share below as a floor.
Gram cabinet
97.3%
of start links point at a bot
44,146 / 45,376
EUR Ads Cabinet
95.7%
of start links point at a bot
15,409 / 16,106
start and startapp are different plays
start opens a chat with the bot and hands the parameter to it: the bot receives it with the /start command and can route the user to the right offer or credit the traffic source. startapp opens the mini-app immediately and passes the parameter into the web app. Both occur in both cabinets, but start is markedly more common — advertisers want the bot step, where they can measure and retain.
External links — where the cabinets diverge
This is the largest capability difference, and it has nothing to do with start. In the EUR cabinet, sending traffic to an external site is a working, high-volume scenario. In the Gram cabinet, external destinations are one-offs in our observations.
Gram cabinet
0.001%
leaves Telegram
6 / 596,690
EUR Ads Cabinet
22.3%
leaves Telegram
30,864 / 138,459
External links in the Gram cabinet are a statistical zero: 6 of them, 0.001% of the cabinet. We went through them one by one. Every single one is dated to the first two days of our Gram-cabinet observation window, and some carry markers typical of the EUR cabinet in their URLs (tgclid, utm_medium=cpm). That looks more like a cabinet-attribution error at the edge of the window than a working scenario. In practice it means we have not seen a single ordinary external destination in the Gram cabinet across the whole observation period — but "have not seen" and "forbidden by the platform" are different claims, and we are not making the second one.
How to read this
These are observations of real ads, not an extract from the documentation. A link type missing from the sample means "we have not seen it", not "the platform forbids it" — we cannot make the stronger claim and we do not.
Observation depth differs by cabinet, and it is the depth of OUR observation, not the launch dates of the cabinets. A shorter window on one cabinet does not make it "newer" — it means we started recording it later. Month-over-month comparisons are only valid inside the overlapping period.
Every number on this page is a live aggregate from the database as of the stated date. We do not round for effect and we do not carry figures over from press releases.
Only ads that have a CTA link and a determined cabinet enter the breakdown. Hidden creatives and the small tail the classifier assigned to neither Gram nor EUR are excluded: that tail has no CTA link at all, so there is nothing to parse, and giving it a row in a "what each cabinet supports" table would make it look like a third cabinet that does not exist.
Check it against live ads
Every creative behind this table sits in the open archive — filterable by cabinet, niche, country and advertiser.
Cabinet capabilities — FAQ
Does the start parameter work in the Gram cabinet (formerly the TON cabinet)?
Yes. Deep links of the t.me/username?start=... shape appear in creatives from both cabinets — Gram and EUR alike — and in both they almost always point at a bot. The difference between the cabinets is not whether start is supported; it is where the button actually leads. Live counts are in the table above.
Can I send traffic to an external website from either cabinet?
In the EUR cabinet external links are ordinary practice — a large share of the creatives we observe leave Telegram, most often through click trackers and affiliate redirects. In the Gram cabinet we practically never see them: every one of the handful of exceptions falls in the first days of our Gram-cabinet observation window, and some carry EUR-cabinet markers in their URLs, which reads as a cabinet-attribution error rather than a working scenario. "We have not seen it" is not the same as "the platform forbids it", and we only claim the first. Exact shares are in the table above.
How is startapp different from start?
start opens a chat with the bot and hands the parameter to it: the bot receives it with the /start command and can route the user to the right offer or credit the traffic source. startapp opens the mini-app straight away, skipping the bot conversation, and the parameter arrives inside the web app. Both appear in creatives from both cabinets, but start is markedly more common.
How do you decide that a start link leads to a bot?
By the target username: if it ends in "bot", we count the link as bot-bound. That is the same convention Telegram itself enforces for bot usernames, so it is reliable in the common case — but it is a heuristic, not a lookup. A bot whose username does not end in "bot" is undercounted, so treat the bot share as a floor rather than an exact figure.
Why do your numbers differ from the Telegram documentation?
Because this is not documentation. We do not restate the platform rules — we count what actually ran: every creative that entered our archive is broken down by the type of its CTA link. Documentation tells you what is permitted; these numbers tell you what is used. If a link type is absent from the sample, that means "we have not observed it", not "the platform forbids it".
What period does the data cover?
The as-of date sits in the page header, next to the totals. Observation depth differs by cabinet: we have been recording the EUR cabinet substantially longer than the Gram cabinet. That is the depth of our observation, not the launch dates of the cabinets — do not read the shorter Gram-cabinet window as "the Gram cabinet is newer". It also means month-over-month trends are only comparable inside the overlapping period.
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