Telegram enables Toncoin payments for in-platform ad purchases

Companies • April 1, 2024, 1:08AM EDT

Published 1 minute earlier on

Quick Take

Telegram lets users buy channel advertisements with Toncoin.
The platform plans to share 50% of ad revenue with owners of public channels.

Telegram now lets users purchase in-platform advertisements with Toncoin, according to an announcement made over the weekend. This update is part of the messaging app’s latest user monetization update that distributes 50% of the revenue from ads shown in public Telegram channels to their owners.

According to Telegram, users can now promote their channels by paying as little as “a handful” of Toncoins. Users will have the authority to choose the exact channels to place their TON-powered ads, the announcement stated.

Furthermore, channel owners will be able to withdraw their rewards without fees, while the withdrawal service will become available in the coming weeks on Telegram’s Fragment exchange, according to the announcement.

“We chose the TON Blockchain because it has low fees, high transaction speeds – and holds a record for the number of transactions it can process per second,” Telegram wrote in the announcement. TON reportedly recorded 100,000 transactions per second during a test last November.

Telegram CEO Pavel Durov teased the update on his personal channel last month. While Telegram channels generate over 1 trillion in monthly views, only 10% of channels have been monetized with Telegram ads so far, Durov said.

“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,” Durov said in his previous message.

The price of Toncoin rose 2.32% in the last 24 hours to $5.24 at the time of publication.

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About Author

Danny Park is an East Asia reporter at The Block writing on topics including Web3 developments and crypto regulations in the region. He was formerly a reporter at Forkast.News, where he actively covered the downfall of Terra-Luna and FTX. Based in Seoul, Danny has previously produced written and video content for media companies in Korea, Hong Kong and China. He holds a Bachelor of Journalism and Business Marketing from the University of Hong Kong.