Telegram to introduce digital ads on its platform

Telegram, the encrypted messaging app and longtime drug dealer paradise, plans to monetize in 2021, founder Pavel Durov said on Wednesday.

the the announcement comes as the app nears its eighth anniversary and “nears 500 million active users,” according to Durov’s statement Telegram string. Each new user who come tributary, he explained, bring more server costs for the company to face. “A project of our size needs at least a few hundred million dollars a year to continue,” he said.

All currently free games of the platform will remain free, he said, adding that in the new year Telegram will add some new features for sales teams or “power users”. He did not go into details of what new features would be, in addition to mentioning that Telegram would bring its own advertising platform on board. (In another Publish Telegram announced it will create a Clubhouse-style persistent voice chat feature– although, again, this may or may not be one of the aspects monetized.)

According to the message, the idea is not to run ads in private one-to-one or group discussions in particular, because, in Durov’s words, “communication between people should be free of any concerns. kind of advertisement ”. Instead, he pointed to what he called Telegram’s “one-to-many” channels which have their own dedicated group following a specific Telegram poster. These act more like a Twitter thread than an SMS conversation, and like Twitter, they will benefit from the ad serving treatment..

So far, the platform has been largely floated by Durov’s personal savings. In 2018, he attracted $ 1.7 billion of private investors in the hope to develop its own blockchain token that would potentially monetize the platform. But after two years and a significant amount of repression by the SEC, Durov ad in May that he would end the effort and reimbursement a good $ 1.2 billion to investors behind.

As to what these potential ads might look like, it’s still a bit unclear. Twitter ad systems, such as we noticed in the past have their own issues, and as Durov’s article correctly points out, getting commercials exchanged in your usual scroll may seem kind of shit, especially when they replace the regular positions the way Twitter ads tend to do. Again, any advertisement on a social media platform is usually at best an unwanted experience, even when they are not hideous watch. Moreover, considering how creepy In-app ad platforms tend to be, you can imagine why this wouldn’t be the most welcome news for Telegram. more privacy-conscious users.

Durov, for his part, promised that Telegram’s impending ad serving systems would be “user-friendly” and respect Telegrammers. privacy. But seeing how we heard this exact promise of fair about each player in the tracking and targeting game, it might be worth taking Durov’s word with a grain of salt.