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GLOSSARY · 67 TERMS

Telegram Ads glossary

Key Telegram advertising terms — cabinets, formats, metrics and strategies. Click any term for the full definition.

Platform

Amharic Telegram market (Ethiopia)
Telegram's presence in Ethiopia — a fast-growing user base where the dominant ad-target language is Amharic (Ge'ez script, Unicode U+1200–U+137F). Active verticals in 2026: job-listing bots (Mella Work and similar), money-transfer services, and small-business commerce. Cabinet preference skews EUR over TON/Stars because most Ethiopian advertisers are small-to-medium businesses without crypto-payment infrastructure. tgadsspy coverage of this market depends on script-based language detection — without explicit Ethiopic script handling, creatives fall back to "English" mislabel because Latin chars in brand names dominate detection. See [/wiki/telegram-ads-emerging-markets](/wiki/telegram-ads-emerging-markets) for the broader regional context.
Broadcast Channel
A Telegram channel where only admins can post, while subscribers can only read (and react). Contrast with groups, where everyone can post. Sponsored messages on the Telegram Ads Platform are served only in public broadcast channels — not in groups, not in supergroups. All channels in Telegram Ads Spy’s pool are broadcast.
Channel Category
Telegram-assigned classification for a channel (e.g. News, Crypto, Business, Gaming). In the Ads Platform cabinet, advertisers can target by category. Category is set by the channel owner and reviewed for accuracy — Telegram Ads Spy aggregates the observed category per channel in the /channels listing.
EUR Ads Cabinet
The EUR-denominated official Telegram Ads cabinet at ads.telegram.org. The classic and original of the three official cabinets: advertisers create campaigns, upload sponsored-message creatives, set channel/topic/language targeting, top up balance in EUR (€2 minimum per campaign; standard CPM ≈€1, floor 0.1 TON ≈ $0.36 per 1,000). Ads serve in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers after Telegram moderation review. The EUR cabinet accounts for roughly a third of creatives in the Telegram Ads Spy archive — the TON cabinet carries the larger share; see live distribution at tgads.net or compare cabinets at /info/telegram-ads-platform. Sister cabinets: TON Ads (crypto) and Stars Promotions (mini-apps).
Gift Collection
An owner-curated grouping of the Stars gifts saved on a profile. Telegram lets a recipient sort received gifts into named collections (exposed as collection_ids on each saved gift), the way one might arrange a display cabinet — for example separating rare unique (NFT) gifts from regular ones. Collections are a presentation and curation layer, not a separate gift type: the same gift can sit in a collection while still counting toward the profile's public stargifts_count. For the gifts vertical they reveal how a profile organises and showcases its most valued gifts.
Minimum Budget (Telegram Ads)
The minimum to launch a campaign on the official Telegram Ads Platform is just €2, and the CPM floor is 0.1 TON ≈ $0.36 per 1,000 impressions. Direct access to the platform historically required a €2M deposit (€1M of it non-refundable) — a barrier that formally remains since 2021, which is why most advertisers enter through authorised resellers and agencies (typical practical entry €500–3,000). Small affiliates often default to direct TON channel placements, where a single post starts from ~$20–50.
Supergroup
A Telegram group with more than 200 members, upgraded to higher limits and richer admin controls. Supergroups are NOT eligible for sponsored messages from the Telegram Ads Platform — only broadcast channels are. Supergroups can, however, host TON-paid promo posts from their admins.
Telegram Ad Cabinet
The corporate self-service interface on the Telegram Ads Platform where advertisers create campaigns, upload creatives, set targeting (language, channel categories) and top up balance in EUR. Access requires a funded advertiser account. Each creative goes through moderation; approved ads begin serving in matching public channels.
Telegram Ads Platform
The official advertising system by Telegram, launched in 2021. Advertisers buy sponsored messages that are served across eligible public channels with 1,000+ subscribers. Payment is in EUR via a corporate ad cabinet; pricing is CPM-based. All creatives are reviewed by Telegram moderation before going live.
Telegram Ads Spy
Telegram Ads Spy (tgadsspy.com) is an ad-intelligence archive for Telegram advertising. It indexes sponsored messages and channel placements so marketers can search competitor creatives by brand, niche, country and date, study creative formats and regional strategy, and track how campaigns change over time. The service is also referred to as "Telegram Ad Spy" or "TG Ad Spy".
Telegram App Center
The discovery surface for Telegram mini-apps and bots inside the official Telegram client. Categories: Gaming, Social, Finance, Tools, Productivity, Entertainment. Apps surface here by organic install velocity + Stars Promotions paid-boost. Used as the primary user-acquisition channel for major mini-app launches (Hamster Kombat reached 240M installs largely via App Center surfacing). Live daily ranking of indexed mini-apps available at topapps.tg; API at tgadsspy.com/api/v1/miniapps.
Telegram Bot Directory
The aggregate index of all Telegram bots tracked across our pipeline — currently 20,500+ entries. Includes both classical bots (chat-based) and mini-app bots. Each entry stores: username, title, avatar, niche classification, MAU estimate (botActiveUsers from gramesh), Stars rating, sponsored-enabled flag. Bots become eligible for the topapps.tg ranking once enriched. Public browse at tgadsspy.com/bots; JSON API at tgadsspy.com/api/v1/bots; CSV mirror at tgadsspy.com/api/v1/bots.csv. CC-BY-4.0 license.
Telegram Premium User
A user with the paid Telegram Premium subscription. Premium users see fewer sponsored messages (ad frequency is reduced, not eliminated). For advertisers this means premium-heavy channels deliver lower impression count per subscriber than free-tier channels — worth accounting for when modelling reach.
Telegram Stars (XTR)
Telegram’s native in-app currency, ISO-4217 code XTR. Stars are purchased by users in the official Telegram client and used to pay for digital goods inside bots, mini-apps and channels — including paid messages, paid reactions, paid media access, gifts and Stars-priced sponsored ad invoices. From an ad-archive perspective, a creative with invoiceCurrency=XTR signals a cashier offer (purchase flow inside Telegram) rather than an off-platform redirect.
Telegram Stars Gift
A digital gift bought with Telegram Stars and sent to a user or channel, where it can be displayed on the profile. Gifts come in two kinds: regular sticker-based gifts and limited-edition unique (NFT) gifts. The number a profile has received is exposed publicly as stargifts_count, which tgadsspy reads as a wealth-and-engagement signal — profiles with many gifts tend to be premium audiences with high Stars spend. The owner can pin favourites, hide a sender's name, and sort gifts into collections. For the gifts vertical this is the umbrella concept; see saved gift, unique gift and gift collection for the specific mechanics.
Unique Gift (NFT)
A limited-edition Telegram Stars gift that carries individual attributes (model, backdrop, symbol) and a serial number, making each copy distinct — Telegram's native NFT format. Unlike a regular sticker gift, a unique gift is transferable and can be moved or traded on the TON blockchain, so it holds and accrues real-world value. In the gift data this is the unique variant of a saved gift (versus regular); listings can be sorted by value or filtered to exclude unique items. A profile holding rare unique gifts is a strong premium-audience and high-Stars-spend signal for advertiser targeting.

Ad formats

Cashier creative
A sponsored message that triggers a payment flow directly inside Telegram instead of redirecting to an external landing page. Three cashier formats are tracked separately: Stars-priced invoices (invoiceCurrency=XTR), paid-media offers in any currency (USD, EUR, etc.) and Premium giveaways. Cashier creatives concentrate in mini-app advertisers, gaming bots and creator-economy products. Filterable on /cashier; CSV export at /api/v1/cashier-creatives.csv.
Forex coach channel
A Telegram channel whose advertised offer is one-on-one or group trading education — typically marketed as "free training", "earn from your phone", or "I show you my trades". Dominant vertical in Russian-language (\@binvlad), Indonesian-Malay (\@samsudinsangflipper, \@izzatsuperflip7), Persian (\@tahlilclubalerts) and Burmese sponsored ads. CTA usually points to either the coach's personal Telegram channel or a signals bot. From a regulatory perspective sits in a grey zone in most jurisdictions — not gambling but adjacent to it (binary options promotion, leverage encouragement). Detection in tgadsspy classifier requires keyword expansion in non-English locales because phrasing varies sharply by language.
Premium giveaway
A sponsored format where the advertiser raffles Telegram Premium subscriptions (typically 3, 6 or 12 months) to channel subscribers or mini-app users. Identified by media.type=giveaway with structured payload: prize_description, months, winners_count, until_date, countries_iso2[]. Used by channel growth tools, crypto exchanges and gaming bots to acquire active users at low CPA. Counted in the cashier vertical alongside Stars invoices.
Sponsored invoice
A sponsored message whose CTA opens a Telegram payment invoice (purchase flow) instead of a URL. Identified by media.type=invoice in the ad payload, with structured fields: currency (XTR for Stars or ISO-4217 for fiat), total_amount (minor units), title, start_param. Common in Stars-priced bot subscriptions, paid-media offers and digital-goods sales. Tracked as a distinct cashier sub-vertical alongside Premium giveaway and standard ads.
Sponsored Message
A Telegram ad format served at the bottom of qualifying public channels. A sponsored message is a short text (up to 160 characters) with an optional banner image and a CTA button that points to a channel, bot, mini-app, or external URL. Unlike channel-owner placements, sponsored messages are bought through the official Telegram Ads Platform in EUR.
Stars Promotions
The third official Telegram Ads cabinet, billed in Telegram Stars (XTR — Telegram's native digital currency). Stars Promotions cover the «cashier» vertical: boosting bots and mini-apps in the App Center, running gift campaigns and Premium giveaways, promoting paid-media offers. Used heavily by mini-app launches (Hamster Kombat, Catizen, Blum, MemeFi) and by Stars-monetised creators. Minimum billing is per-Star (~$0.013). See live Stars-paid creatives at tgadsspy.com/cashier or the mini-app leaderboard at topapps.tg.
TON Ads (channel placement)
A category of Telegram advertising where an advertiser pays the channel owner directly — typically in TON cryptocurrency — to publish a promotional post. Unlike official sponsored messages, TON-paid placements are not subject to Telegram moderation and appear as regular channel posts. They are the dominant ad format in many niches, particularly crypto, trading and affiliate offers.

Metrics

Ad Spend (estimate)
The total amount an advertiser has spent on a campaign. In Telegram Ads Spy, ad spend is estimated from impression count times an inferred CPM. Estimates are signals for comparison across advertisers and campaigns, not exact billed amounts.
Attribution Window
The time period during which a conversion is credited back to an ad click. Typical windows: 24-hour click, 7-day click, 28-day click (industry standard), 1-day view-through. Telegram Ads Platform does not natively set attribution windows — advertisers pick their own in the tracking tool (GA4, affiliate network) that reads the UTM-tagged CTA.
Audience Quality
A composite judgement of how real and engaged a channel's audience is — the question an advertiser asks before buying a placement. Because Telegram's native audience analytics are visible only to channel admins, a third-party estimate is built from public signals: view rate (views relative to subscribers, size-adjusted), the consistency of engagement over time, subscriber-growth spikes that suggest bulk acquisition, Telegram's own scam/fake/restricted flags, and the channel's age versus its size. tgadsspy surfaces this as a traffic-light estimate (reliable / mixed / questionable) with the reasons shown, rather than a fabricated percentage — an honest signal, not a verdict.
Average Views (avg views per post)
The typical number of views a channel's recent posts receive, reported as the median of the last ~20 posts rather than the mean — a single viral post would skew the mean and overstate normal reach. Average views is the most honest single measure of a channel's working reach: subscriber count tells you how many people could see a post, average views tells you how many typically do. It is the basis for the view-rate and engagement-rate estimates and the axis behind ranking channels by reach. Tracked daily and charted over time per channel.
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
The total marketing + sales spend required to acquire one paying customer. For Telegram-ads buyers, CAC equals total campaign spend divided by paying conversions attributed to the ad. The CAC : LTV ratio is the canonical health check — most performance marketers target LTV ≥ 3× CAC for sustainable growth. Telegram CAC varies wildly by niche: low for crypto airdrops, high for SaaS subscriptions.
Conversion Rate
The percentage of users who complete a desired action after clicking an ad — sign-up, purchase, deposit, app install. Calculated as conversions ÷ ad clicks × 100. In Telegram ads, conversion rate is heavily creative-dependent: a clear value proposition + low-friction CTA (single tap to bot) typically yields 2–8%, while open-loop creatives (links to landing pages with forms) drop to 0.3–1.5%. Used alongside CTR to optimise full funnel.
CPA (Cost per Action)
The total ad spend divided by the number of target actions (signups, purchases, deposits). For affiliate teams running on Telegram, CPA is the key profitability metric — a campaign is sustainable only while CPA stays below the lifetime value of a converted user.
CPC (Cost per Click)
Pricing model where the advertiser pays only when a user clicks the ad. The Telegram Ads Platform uses CPM by default, but effective CPC can be derived as CPM/CTR/10 — useful for comparing across platforms where CPC is native (Google Ads, Meta Ads).
CPM (Cost per Mille)
Cost per one thousand impressions. A standard advertising pricing model used by the Telegram Ads Platform and most TON-paid channel placements. On Telegram Ads, CPM is set by the advertiser and competes for eligible impressions; on TON channel placements, CPM is implied by negotiating a post price against the channel’s average views.
Creative Fatigue
The performance decay of a Telegram Ads creative as audience exposure accumulates. Symptoms: CTR drops by 30%+ over the first 2 weeks of high-frequency rotation; users start dismissing the format pattern. Mitigation: weekly creative refresh (rotation of 3–5 variants per cabinet), CTA copy A/B testing, banner re-design. Telegram Ads platform itself does not surface fatigue scores — we infer fatigue from impression-density vs CTR-decay curves visible in the public archive at tgadsspy.com. Live fatigue analytics via /api/v1/analytics/creative-fatigue.
CTR (Click-Through Rate)
The ratio of ad clicks to impressions, expressed as a percentage. On the Telegram Ads Platform, CTR is reported to the advertiser in the ad cabinet. High-performing sponsored messages in competitive niches (crypto, trading) typically show 0.5–1.5% CTR; broader consumer offers can reach 3–5%.
Engagement Rate (ER)
The share of a channel’s audience that interacts with a post — typically views divided by subscriber count. Channels with high ER are prized for ad placements because a larger portion of subscribers is likely to see and react to sponsored content.
Fake Followers (subscriber inflation)
Subscribers that are bots, dormant accounts, or bought in bulk to inflate a channel's headline size without contributing real reach. They make a channel look more valuable to advertisers than it is. Telegram exposes no native bot-follower metric to non-admins, so detection relies on open signals: a low view rate relative to subscribers, erratic or near-zero engagement, sudden subscriber jumps between snapshots (a classic bulk-purchase pattern), and a young channel that is already very large. No single signal is conclusive — these are probabilistic indicators, not proof — which is why tgadsspy reports an audience-quality estimate rather than a precise "bot percentage".
Impression
A single display of a creative to a viewer. On the Telegram Ads Platform, each time a user opens a qualifying channel and the sponsored message is rendered counts as one impression. On TON channel placements, views of the promotional post are counted as impressions.
LTV (Lifetime Value)
The total revenue a single user generates over their full active relationship with the advertiser — used to determine the ceiling on customer-acquisition spend. Telegram advertisers in subscription-driven niches (VPN, education, trading platforms) target high-LTV cohorts even at higher initial CAC. Common formulas: average revenue per user × average retention months, or sum of historical purchases per cohort.
Reach (estimate)
The estimated number of unique viewers a creative is likely to have. In a public channel, reach is commonly approximated by the channel’s average post views within 24-48 hours. For multi-channel campaigns, reach is summed across placements, with rough deduplication for audience overlap.
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
A profitability metric calculated as revenue generated divided by ad spend, often expressed as a ratio (3:1 means $3 revenue per $1 spent) or percentage (300%). Telegram-ads buyers track ROAS per creative, niche and geo to identify which campaigns warrant scale and which to pause. Unlike CPM or CTR, ROAS captures the full funnel — Telegram impressions through to actual purchase or sign-up downstream of the ad click.
Share of Voice (SoV)
Share of advertising airtime captured by a single advertiser within a niche or geo over a time window. Computed as: (advertiser's creatives in scope) ÷ (all creatives in same scope) × 100%. A 25% SoV in the crypto niche means 1 in 4 sponsored impressions came from that advertiser. SoV is the canonical signal for competitive positioning — used by buyers to size opponents, by sellers to price retainers, by analysts to track market consolidation. Computed live via /api/v1/analytics/share-of-voice on tgadsspy.com; default windows 7d / 30d / 90d.
Stars rating level
A public Telegram metric awarded to bots based on accumulated Telegram Stars revenue. Levels run from 0 (no Stars earned) upward; each level has a stars threshold visible in the bot’s profile. Stars rating signals monetisation maturity — used as a proxy for "this mini-app actually makes money" when ranking the /miniapps leaderboard. Higher levels typically correlate with main-app activation and sustained MAU.
Subscriber Count (members)
The number of users subscribed to a Telegram channel — its headline audience size and the most-cited channel metric. Telegram publishes a rounded figure for channels above ~10,000 members, so third-party trackers record observation-as-of snapshots, not a live counter. Subscriber count alone says little about real reach: a large list with low average views points to an inactive or inflated audience, which is why it is read alongside view rate and engagement rate. It is the default axis for channel rankings and the base for measuring subscriber growth.
Subscriber Growth Rate
The change in a channel's subscriber count over a period, expressed as a percentage of the starting figure — the headline measure of whether a channel is gaining or losing audience. It is computed from dated snapshots: comparing the earliest and latest reading in a window (e.g. 30 days) gives the relative growth. Steady organic growth is a health signal; a sharp spike between snapshots is a classic bulk-acquisition pattern, so it feeds the audience-quality estimate rather than counting purely as a positive. Because it needs at least two snapshots, growth is available for channels tracked over time, and the fastest growers are ranked publicly.
Telegram Ads Pricing
Cross-cabinet pricing models on Telegram Ads. The EUR cabinet uses a CPM auction with a 0.1 TON ≈ $0.36 floor per 1,000 impressions and a €2 campaign minimum; the standard sponsored CPM is ≈€1, with a typical €0.5–3 range by niche × geo (web3/crypto = top, MENA news = floor). TON Ads is billed in TON and runs higher for crypto-channel inventory — about $5–15 CPM, ~$2 for broader audiences. Stars Promotions billing is per-Star (~$0.013 each, floats with TON), used for mini-app installs and Stars-denominated gift drops. Detailed percentile distributions and live benchmarks are published at tgmetrics.net; per-creative spend estimates at tgadsspy.com/advertisers.
View Rate (views-to-subscribers)
The ratio of a channel's average post views to its subscriber count, expressed as a percentage. A 50,000-subscriber channel averaging 10,000 views per post has a 20% view rate. Healthy public channels typically sit between 10% and 40%; the figure naturally drops for very large channels (a 10M-subscriber channel at 3–8% is normal). An unusually low view rate on a sizable channel is a classic signal of an inactive or inflated audience, which is why it is one of the inputs to an audience-quality estimate. Note that views can exceed subscribers when posts are widely forwarded, so a high view rate is not by itself a quality concern.

Strategies

A/B Test (Creative Split)
Running two or more creative variants against the same audience to measure which performs better. On Telegram Ads, advertisers typically split creatives across different campaigns with similar targeting and compare CTR/spend. Archives like Telegram Ads Spy help retroactively: seeing which version of a competitor’s creative they ran most often reveals their A/B winner.
Ad Archive
A permanent, searchable collection of ads that have been served over time. Unlike the live ad stream (which disappears as campaigns end), an archive preserves creatives with stable URLs, datestamps and context. Archives are used by marketers for competitive research, by researchers for historical analysis, and by regulators for accountability.
Affiliate Arbitrage
A model where a media buyer purchases ad inventory at a lower CPM/CPC and routes the resulting traffic to higher-payout offers from advertiser networks (CPA, RevShare, PPL). On Telegram, arbitrage is a major ad category — operators run dozens of TON-paid placements simultaneously, push iGaming/finance/crypto offers, and optimise per-source ROI daily. Heavy in TR/RU/PT-BR/KZ Telegram channels.
Cabinet routing
The practice of using one Telegram Ads cabinet (registered in country A) to serve sponsored creatives that target audiences in country B. Common pattern: Filipino-language gambling brands (PINOY365, Corgibet) running through Turkish or UAE-registered EUR cabinets to reach Philippine audiences while keeping the cabinet anchored in a market with simpler advertiser onboarding. When researching a brand in tgadsspy, filtering by geo alone misses these targeting decisions — combine geo + language filter to surface the full picture.
Category (Telegram Ads Spy taxonomy)
The coarse-grained taxonomy layer in Telegram Ads Spy — six super-groups: Finance, Gambling, Tech, Content, Commerce, Lifestyle. Each category aggregates 3–8 niches (e.g. Finance = crypto + trading + finance + prop-firm). Useful when a researcher wants the whole vertical without enumerating niches. Available as a filter on /api/v1/ads?category=<group>, time-series via /api/v1/trends?dim=category, or as standalone pages at /categories and /categories/<group>. The mapping niche → category is canonical (NICHE_THEME in lib/niche-meta.ts) and stable across releases.
Competitor Ad Analysis
The practice of systematically studying the advertising activity of competitors — which creatives they run, in which channels, with what frequency and approximate budget. Ad archives like Telegram Ads Spy make this possible for Telegram by exposing every indexed creative as a permanent, searchable URL.
Context-based advertising
A targeting model that places ads adjacent to relevant content rather than at specific users. The signal is the context (channel topic, page subject, language, geo) — not the demographic or behavioural profile of an individual. Canonical example: Telegram Ads serving sponsored messages inside niche channels. Strength: privacy-preserving, cheap CPMs, creates demand. Weakness: lower individual targeting precision than intent-based or behavioural models. Telegram's entire ad platform is built on this principle (no per-user demographic targeting exposed to advertisers).
Conversion Tracking
The process of attributing a user’s action (signup, purchase, deposit) back to the ad that drove the traffic. On Telegram, the most common approach is UTM-tagging the CTA URL + reading UTMs in the destination analytics. Telegram Ads Platform does not natively report conversions — advertisers plug external tools like GA4, Mixpanel, or affiliate tracker pixels.
Frequency Cap
The maximum number of times the same ad is served to the same user within a time window. On the Telegram Ads Platform, frequency is automatically managed to prevent ad fatigue — the same sponsored message is typically shown to a user at most once per session and capped daily.
Funnel
The sequence of steps a user takes from seeing an ad to a target action (purchase, signup, deposit). A typical Telegram ad funnel: impression → click CTA → land in bot/channel/mini-app → provide info → complete conversion. Each step has drop-off; optimizing a funnel means reducing the drop-off at the weakest step.
Geo Targeting
Setting ads to be shown only to users in specific countries or regions. On the Telegram Ads Platform, advertisers target by channel language, which correlates with geography. In Telegram Ads Spy, geo of a creative is inferred from the CTA URL TLD and from the language signals of the channels it appears in.
Intent-based advertising
A targeting model that activates ads in response to a user's explicit signal of interest — typically a search query, a recently viewed product, or a cart-abandonment event. Canonical example: Google Search Ads triggered by keywords. Strength: extremely high conversion intent (the user is already looking for your category). Weakness: limited to existing demand — cannot create awareness for categories users do not yet know they need. Contrast with context-based advertising. Telegram Ads is fundamentally context-based, not intent-based.
Language Targeting
Targeting method on the Telegram Ads Platform where advertisers pick one or more languages. A creative in English targeting English-language channels will be served across those channels regardless of the viewer’s geo — language, not geo, is the native axis in the Telegram Ads cabinet.
Lookalike Audience
An audience segment built to resemble a seed list of known-good users (typically high-LTV customers). Standard on Meta and Google; not available as a native primitive on the Telegram Ads Platform. On Telegram, advertisers approximate lookalikes by targeting channel categories and languages that correlate with their seed audience.
Niche (Telegram Ads Spy taxonomy)
The granular taxonomy layer in tgadsspy. Each indexed creative is classified into one of ~30 niche slugs by a keyword + regex classifier (e.g. crypto, casino, prop-firm, dating, vpn, bots, podcasts, mini-apps-productivity). Niche is the primary filter for /api/v1/ads?niche=<slug> and per-niche pages at /niches/<slug>. For coarser browsing — see Category. The classifier rules live in lib/niche.ts; new rules propagate to historical creatives via the reclassify-creatives cron every 30 minutes.
Niche Classification
Automatic or manual categorization of ads by vertical — crypto, trading, gambling, VPN, tech, news, retail, finance, gaming, education, adult, bots, and others. Niches let marketers compare market size and growth across verticals, pick landing categories for their campaigns, and build niche-specific watchlists.
Retargeting
Serving follow-up ads to users who previously engaged — visited a page, started a bot flow, abandoned a cart. Telegram Ads Platform does not expose native pixel-based retargeting; advertisers build retargeting inside their own funnel (bot users, newsletter subscribers) and deliver follow-up via direct messaging, not via sponsored messages.
Telegram Ads Targeting
The targeting taxonomy across Telegram's three official ad cabinets. EUR cabinet — language, channel/topic categories, list of specific channels (allow-list), language-only fallback. TON Ads — the same channel / topic / language targeting, billed in TON: you reach a crypto audience by picking crypto / DeFi / NFT channels (the platform does not read on-chain wallets or token holdings). Stars Promotions — App Center categories (gaming, social, finance, tools), mini-app DAU bands. None of the cabinets support per-user demographic targeting (age/gender/income) or wallet-level data — the privacy-first stance is baked into the platform. Topic + language is the dominant lever in the EUR cabinet for most B2C launches; the channel allow-list is preferred for niche B2B and crypto.
Telegram Mini-App Launch
The end-to-end sequence of activating a new Telegram mini-app for mass adoption. Standard stages: (1) bot + mini-app set-up via @BotFather, (2) App Center submission with category fit, (3) seed-user acquisition via in-network referrals or paid Telegram Ads, (4) Stars Promotions to amplify organic install velocity, (5) cabinet retargeting based on early-cohort behaviour. Top historical launches: Hamster Kombat (240M installs in 8 weeks), Notcoin, Catizen, Blum, MemeFi. Live leaderboard at topapps.tg; editorial picks at bestapps.tg; agency execution via g.media.
Watchlist
A user-defined alert rule: "notify me when a new creative matches this keyword / channel / advertiser / niche". In Telegram Ads Spy, watchlists live inside @tgadsspybot. The Free tier includes one watchlist; Pro unlocks unlimited watchlists, email delivery and webhook integration.
Wayback View
A date-based view of historical content — "what was running on this day". Popularized by the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. In Telegram Ads Spy, telegramadsarchive.com provides a wayback view over Telegram advertising: every indexed creative has a datestamp, and dedicated per-day pages list all ads served on a given UTC day.