An overview of Telegram monetization efforts

I am an avid Telegram customer since 2013. What used to be a social messenger became a full-blown media, 3rd party integration platform, work tool & a dropbox kind of thing. Over 8 years Telegram has grown up to over 500 million active users, getting to the # 1 most downloaded app in the world just this January. One day Telegram will surpass WhatsApp worldwide, as it already did in so many countries.

Here are the monetization products that are already visible and the ones that are possible for Telegram, in my opinion.

Social commerce

Telegram allowed e-commerce & e-service companies to accept payments from Telegram users in a native way within the app in 2017. To this day, there are two conditions on how this might work: 1) companies have to have an existing contract with a payment provider that ultimately processes payments, 2) this very payment provider has to have an integration with the Telegram Bot Payments API.

As of December 2021, there are only 9 payment companies that have managed to do that: 1 international (Stripe) and 8 of the ex-USSR decent — Russia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, etc. To me, this only reflects the geographical distribution of the Telegram payment activity.

In April 2022 this product was enriched with new Payments 2.0 features such as invoices as an action button with he purchase amount & tips.

Currently, Telegram does not get any monetization from this product, being a content management system for the companies and payment providers, akin to websites. However, there is a pretty straightforward monetization opportunity out there if only Telegram itself became a payment provider or a marketplace.

Native ad platform

For years ‘no paid ads’ was one of the Telegram’s propagated merit to their users. However, while Telegram did not sell ads, Telegram channels did. Channel owners were serving ads to their subscribers constantly. Several third-party ad-exchange platforms were established. All these money flows were passing Telegram by.

In 2021 Telegram has finally launched its own ads under the name of Sponsored Messages. It works more or less like any other ad platform out there. Marketing agencies quickly appeared, buying up traffic in bulk and re-selling to small merchants. The platform is still in the testing stage. For now, the ads are text-based. You know what’s the next step, right? Video ads. Do you know what else is pretty straightforward? Ad-blocks as a paid feature.

Telegram gets monetization out of this product. It might become the largest stream of income for this company, if everything goes well, as it did for other peers in the social media industry.

Games

This could be huge. If Telegram wasn’t an app on the existing platforms run by Apple & Google. Both companies are notorious for their battle with the largest apps that try to roll out in-app purchases skipping the store rules. One day there will be a change.

Since 2016 Telegram allows game developers to integrate fun and simple HTML5 games into bots and group chats free of charge. No monetization yet, sadly. The best we can expect is the integration of the native Ads into these games and a revenue share.

Donations & subscriptions

Telegram is all about creating communities, what they call one-to-many and many-to-many chats. Telegram now is a huge platform hosting communities, it is a content-rich media platform like YouTube, TikTok, or Facebook with its own creators. It is 100% involved in the worldwide influencer economy. Naturally, there are two very obvious monetization opportunities for the platform where content is being created and consumed. Single-time gifts (or tips, or donations) and recurring subscriptions to premium content. Patreon, DonationAlerts, GoFundme — are good examples of the product that any platform can launch in a native way.

In April 2021 Donate bot appeared that allowed Telegram channel owners to accept monetary support from their followers, and to offer subscriptions to their private channels for a fee. It is not the only bot that does a similar job. However, it is the only one to this date that is so native and beautifully organic, you would think it is done by Telegram itself.

Telegram is not getting any monetization out of it just yet, but the communities it built already do. One step, just one step away.

Own currency

We all know about the scandal of TON blockchain, Gram cryptocurrency, and TON Wallet that was developed by Telegram in 2017, and later banned by the US government. That would have been an ultimate monetization, hands down.

In a surprising turn of events, the TON blockchain survived. It was passed over to the community of developers, ending relaunched at the end of 2021 as a project independent from Telegram. Yet bearing the same name and endorsed by Pavel himself. As of now, TON cryptocurrency has skyrocketed. Various TON wallets started to appear on Telegram as bots, and there are integrations with the payment bots like Donate as well.

There is no monetization there for Telegram unless the Durov brothers have stocked up on TON themselves.

Stickers

Stickers are something that new users instantly fall in love with when they first join Telegram. For now, they are all free, so no monetization there for the platform. However, as we have seen from Apple, Facebook, and many others, there is a very clear way for Telegram to start selling premium packs directly or indirectly, sharing revenue with the artists that create them. I guess the revenues won’t be too much though.

Work tools

Telegram gets closer and closer to niche professional use. Starting with being a very basic Slack for work chats (still a lot to do), now it goes directly into Zoom, TikTok & Clubhouse realm with live streaming & broadcasting to an unlimited number of users.

When there is a product like that, you might further expect premium features, levels, and packages, gifts for the streamers, customer relationship features, etc. Again, it is free for now, with no monetization just yet. But the gates are open.

What the Money is a lifestyle channel about fintech, e-commerce, business and innovations by Anna Kuzmina, CBDO at 131. From Russia. With love.

Follow Anna on Finextra, Telegram или на VC.ru.

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