Messaging app Telegram has decided to push through with its monetisation plan with the launch of sponsored messages aimed at allowing its users promote their channels and bots by paying a fee.

Sponsored messages are currently in the test mode and are not available to everyone. Once they are fully launched and allow Telegram to cover its basic costs (such as equipment and data centres that are used by channel admins to deliver their content to our hundreds of millions of users), the company plans to start sharing ad revenue with the admins of channels where sponsored messages are displayed.

No ads in chats

While this is a shift from the earlier stand that there will not be any promotional material on Telegram, the company said that there will be no advertisements in chats.

“Sponsored messages cannot appear in your chat list, private chats or groups. Sponsored messages on Telegram are shown only in large public one-to-many channels with 1,000-plus members – and are based solely on the topic of the public channels in which they are shown. This means that no user data is mined or analysed to display them,” said Telegram, assuaging concerns of the platform going the WhatsApp way.

When WhatsApp was launched its founders had said that users will not see any promotional material, but after it was acquired by Facebook, the messaging platform has been rolling out various monetisation features.

Telegram said it will be “more ad-free” than WhatsApp.

“WhatsApp already shares user data with advertisers, even though they don’t show ads themselves. On Telegram, however, advertisers will never get your private data. Besides, if you use Telegram the way you use WhatsApp, you will never see a single ad,” said the company in a blog post.

“If WhatsApp introduces a similar feature, they are likely to also display ads there, like their parent company already does on Instagram and Facebook,” it added.

comment COMMENT NOW