Telegram on Wednesday, February 28, 2024, announced its plans to roll out an advertising platform in March 2024, offering channel owners the opportunity to gain financial rewards.
The CEO and founder, Pavel Durov, said in a statement via his Telegram channel that the rewards will be distributed in toncoin on the TON blockchain.
The social media platform currently has more than 800 million monthly active users around the world.
The CEO revealed that under this system, channel owners will receive 50 per cent of the revenue generated from ads displayed in their channels.
He said that despite the one trillion monthly views on broadcast channels, only 10 per cent of these views are currently monetized through Telegram Ads, the platform’s promotional tool.
The statement reads, “Next month, channel owners on Telegram can start receiving financial rewards from their work.
“Broadcast channels on Telegram generate 1 trillion views monthly. Currently, only 10 per cent of these views are monetized with Telegram Ads, a promotion tool designed with privacy in mind.
“In March, the Telegram Ad Platform will officially open to all advertisers in nearly a hundred new countries. Channel owners in these countries will start receiving 50 per cent of any revenue that Telegram makes from displaying ads in their channels.
“To ensure ad payments and withdrawals are fast and secure, we will exclusively use the TON blockchain. 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.”
Telegram’s announcement places it in the company of major platforms like Meta, YouTube, TikTok, and X (previously Twitter), all of which provide users with ad revenue-sharing opportunities.
In July 2022, Meta, formerly Facebook, introduced Music Revenue Sharing, enabling creators to monetize videos featuring licenced music.
Creators can earn a 20 per cent revenue share on eligible videos, with the remaining portion going to music rights holders and Meta.
TikTok also joined the trend by launching its ad revenue-sharing programme, Pulse, in May 2022.
