I hope this works for telegram! They were going to need to launch ads at some point and this transparent plan to get started seems like it considered the user base. It’s become my favorite messaging app and I enjoy the pace of innovation. I get it’s not end to end encrypted but that’s not what I am asking for with telegram - just a decent messaging app that makes it easy to remain anonymous (not sharing phone number), great group support, and not domiciled in the west.
I know the ads plan will expand (I could see ads in 1000+ person groups and not limited to only channels)
I'll be waiting on the sidelines. Telegram has grown way beyond what is sustainable by just the founder's funding. It has also managed to avoid government scrutiny and any legal oversight by running behind a web of proxies and servers. While that has served it well for growth, it can't scale forever as infrastructure costs catch up.
My personal thesis has been to wait and watch as telegram is forced to either shut down or turn evil to raise enough money for their finances. They tried to stay away from fiat by launching <del>TRON</del> TON but that got shut down, and now they're asking for money in euros.
Once this ad program succeeds (it better do, telegram badly needs a revenue stream), it becomes a lynch-pin in telegram's model of success - their bank accounts are prone to seizure the next time a scandal blows up on telegram.
Edit: The ToS defines "Company" as "the legal entity which belongs to Telegram group of companies and has a right to enter the Agreement with the Advertiser for the Services". Sounds like they're extending the "hidden-hosting" to "hidden-shell-companies" as well. Would advertisers be okay entering an agreement with an unknown legal entity?
Yes telegram is so much better than WA from a customer's point of view.
The best thing I like about it is that it's an instant setup on every phone and doesn't require the Google backup integration which can take an hour to restore. Also the fact I can run it on multiple devices simultaneously is also kind of a big deal. Their API is also pretty amazing tbh.
I wish all my friends were on tg instead of wa and i would uninstall the later in a heartbeat.
> I get it’s not end to end encrypted but that’s not what I am asking for with telegram - just a decent messaging app that makes it easy to remain anonymous (not sharing phone number)...
Big thumbs here to TG: I don't use WhatsApp. Never installed it, never will. TG is not just about "not being FB": the UI is really cool and the synch between several devices (say phone and laptop) is flawless.
Now... You wrote "easy to remain anonymous" but AFAICT you cannot register a TG account without a phone number? Or can you now? As in: can you only download the desktop app and do all your messaging from you computer, without ever installing anything on your phone and without ever giving out a phone number for verification?
I agree. Making a decent messaging app with privacy first, they need to make money somehow. I don't want them to go out of business. Though I hope, the ads are not right in your face like youtube does.
First real ads that I see is everywhere. From my perspective it's too much of them. There need to be some frequency filter.
And quality of those ads are very bad: casino, crypto channels. Some of those channels have less than 10k subscribers.
Some answers and clarification on ads from Pavel Durov [1](Google Translate):
“Many users have suggested introducing the ability to disable official advertisements on Telegram channels. Today we are announcing two more changes:
1. Users will be able to disable official advertisements.
We have already started work on this new feature and look forward to launching it this month. It can be issued in the form of an inexpensive subscription, which will allow any user to directly financially support the development of Telegram and never see official advertisements in the channels.
2. Channel authors will be able to turn off official advertisements in their channels for all users.
Some channel creators would also like to "turn off" advertisements in their channels for all users. At the moment, we are calculating the economic conditions for this option. Advertisers will soon be able to place an "invisible" ad on any channel that - assuming there is sufficient cost per impression - will result in no ads on that channel.
Let me remind you that Telegram as a messenger will always be free of ads:
Telegram will not show promotional messages in your chat list, private conversations or groups. Advertising will affect only large channels - services where there is already advertising, and the support of which leads to the greatest costs on the part of Telegram.
We will continue to work on features that will allow Telegram to break even. The interests of users and content authors will remain our priority in this process.”
My guess is, because instant messaging only works with multiple people. The usfullness of an IM service is directly coupled to the amount of your peers using it. If there is no one to talk two, why bother?
Sure, you and I may be happy to pay this, and may even fork out the fee for our loved ones, but how many other people would do that?
I don't think WhatsApp was profitable on that model, and they also had surprisingly low costs (due to great server tech, small team) that I suspect Telegram can't match.
I’m very curious to see if this is a success for the platform! It looks like a very not-creepy way to serve up ads.
One thing concerns me though (if I were to ever end up wanting to advertise) - no external links! Giving the audience to the thing I’m advertising is most of the reason I’d spend money on an ad.
I wonder what sorts of ads are useful if they’re text-only? They qualify no “external” links, so maybe you could still have links to another product-specific channel where there are external links?
> It looks like a very not-creepy way to serve up ads.
Context-based advertising is great for web content (and should have been made the standard years ago), but in a chat room, I'm not so sure.
How does Telegram pick the relevant "topic"? From the channel description alone? I don't think that would be accurate at all. They do it for now, but who knows what will happen in a year or two! Their profit margin is on the line, after all.
I know Telegram can read along with most messages sent through their platform, but up to now they didn't have a reason to do it. Now, I'm not so sure.
I think the idea is that first you create a Telegram channel for your product/store, then make a public message in that channel (which can contain whatever you want), then the ad links to that message. So the funnel is slightly longer, but goes through their platform.
>To ensure and maintain high quality of ad content, a minimum advance payment of €2,000,000 is required to launch ads on the Telegram Ad Platform.
>Of this payment, Telegram holds €1,000,000 as a deposit, and makes the remaining sum available to the advertiser to spend on displaying ads.
>If the contract is terminated and the advertiser spent less than €10,000,000 on ads within the preceding 12 months, the €1,000,000 deposit is withheld by Telegram.
>If the contract is terminated and the advertiser spent more than €10,000,000 on ads within the preceding 12 months, the €1,000,000 deposit is returned.
This seems like a solution to Telegram's cashflow problem - doesn't look like it has much runway left.
> Unlike other apps, Telegram doesn't track whether users tap on a sponsored message and doesn't profile them based on their activity.
I wonder how this will go down with advertisers used to the usual pay-per-click and being able to demographically target their audience before spending their ad dollars.
That depends, some platforms already have their demographics skews so that might be indicative
> pay-per-click
Most platforms even tracked conversions with their pixels, but that will become a no-no as we're nearing the death of the 3rd party cookies. Companies will most probably start relying on Market Mix Models that model the impact of investment into ads on different channels on Revenue also taking into account things such as effect lags etc. Facebook has recently introduced an open source solution for this. I work for a company that also provides their own solution as a part of our platform and the interest is definitely picking up, so this issue might become less of an issue due to how the overall advertising ecosystem evolves in the next few years.
I'm curious if there will there be a possibility that targeted ads may be regulated, especially if alternative models like this and DDG's approach are successful enough.
How about instead, you offer me the ability to buy into your platform? Offer me the ability to use the platform, and pay a monthly fee, as opposed to seeing ads.
Popularity of a messenger hinges on it being free, and viability of ad-driven business model hinges on popularity.
Meanwhile, ad-driven model is a much more comfortable and reliable source of profit (since you are popular and free, users won’t leave, so no need to work hard fighting for customers).
Imagine if instead of three whales we had a variety of paid messengers, all forced to interoperate with each other and offer APIs for third-party client software because that’s what paying users requested.
Here's hoping there will be a way to pay for no ads.
But a question to HN: why have we not seen a mass-market adoption of a P2P, non-centralised messaging system that requires no external services to work?
Mesh and other sorts of networks are cumbersome and have not reached mass-market adoption, so what (technically) is stopping a true E2E P2P platform?
> so what (technically) is stopping a true E2E P2P platform?
The fact that nobody really wants a true p2p platform: you don't want to lose all your stuff if you lose the device. It is clear that federated services like email are superior for most users bar some real hardnuts mindfixed on privacy.
When Facebook acquired WhatsApp I hoped that Telegram will do better, but it's been so many years now and they still don't open source everything and use their homemade cryptography. I find that really unfortunate because the app itself is really great, but not more trustworthy than WhatsApp.
You're using the cryptography alone as a means to gauge trustworthiness there, which is fair, but I'd expand the categories for trustworthiness and rearrange their ranking, please: It's a non-transnational corporation actor. That alone means I trust it magnitudes more than Whatsapp, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, discord, and all the others that I -know- are all captured by the way industry integration works.
- it came as a hidden message at the very end of the message timeline
- it broke unread count on many clients (since it was hidden, it was unread, and there were no notifications other than the unread count on the app's icon that wouldn't go away)
- the test messages ended with "how will it affect you/users?) and instead of leading a post with an answer, it simply dumped you in Pavel Durov's chat
- they looked exactly as any other message in the timeline with no indication it was an ad
Presumably all this will be fixed, but people are kinda pissed.
I love the Telegram UX but have always been wary of its owner’s benevolence. They have bootstrapped an amazing platform and I hope they are able to get a strong ROI without compromising the great community they have built.
Telegram blocks attempts like these by saying that doing that kind of stuff is against TOS. Then they can use that excuse to have apps taken down from the play store/app store.
To receive push notifications for iOS/Android apps, you need to upload your developer keys (!!!) to Telegram push server. So they can ban clients that disable advertising.
1. Too much of hassle for most people out there.
2. (hypothetical) desire to keep Telegram afloat? I would rather pay a recurring fee though than get ads, but if the choice would be "Telegram with ads" vs "No Telegram at all" (if they run out of money), I would prefer the former option.
This is a wise move - apart from the finances and steady revenue stream, Telegram is well aware that most channel owners already include "paid posts" and sponsor messages. As a channel owner, the biggest stumbling block is discoverability. Therefore, you contact big channel owners and request them to put up your post (or pay extra to pin it).
There's a cost involved - it depends on the number of subscriptions. Though, from my rough estimates, 1 in 5 subscribers end up getting it. There are detailed channel statistics that measure the impact of each post made.
I notice the discussion here is being done by most users, who don't have channels or not on Telegram either. There has been a gradual acceptance of Telegram here, which is vying for a serious social media alternative. WhatsApp plans to roll out "Communities" in response to Telegram channels. However, its ownership is nuclear waste.
They have several innovative features in pipeline. I use channel to relay video calling (I can record it and host unlimited users). The video calling has improved by leaps and bounds in past several weeks and has become a serious alternative to Facetime.
>Telegram will not show promotional messages in your chat list, private conversations or groups. Advertising will affect only large channels - services where there is already advertising, and the support of which leads to the greatest costs on the part of Telegram.
The observation on HN seems rather strange. One Day, HN bash anyone who support Ads as a way forward to offer any Internet services. All Ads are evil. At some point people are even questioning how could anyone be working inside Ad industry.
Another day HN are extremely happy to see Telegram getting ads to support their services. Because they are competing with Facebook / Whatsapp.
May be after all it isn't Ads are evil or bad, it is ads from Facebook or Google are bad?
I do support Telegram on this one. They need it for their further growth and expansion. This will increase the user and brand of the ads will try to promote.
[+] [-] kylehotchkiss|4 years ago|reply
I know the ads plan will expand (I could see ads in 1000+ person groups and not limited to only channels)
[+] [-] captn3m0|4 years ago|reply
My personal thesis has been to wait and watch as telegram is forced to either shut down or turn evil to raise enough money for their finances. They tried to stay away from fiat by launching <del>TRON</del> TON but that got shut down, and now they're asking for money in euros.
Once this ad program succeeds (it better do, telegram badly needs a revenue stream), it becomes a lynch-pin in telegram's model of success - their bank accounts are prone to seizure the next time a scandal blows up on telegram.
Edit: The ToS defines "Company" as "the legal entity which belongs to Telegram group of companies and has a right to enter the Agreement with the Advertiser for the Services". Sounds like they're extending the "hidden-hosting" to "hidden-shell-companies" as well. Would advertisers be okay entering an agreement with an unknown legal entity?
[+] [-] superasn|4 years ago|reply
The best thing I like about it is that it's an instant setup on every phone and doesn't require the Google backup integration which can take an hour to restore. Also the fact I can run it on multiple devices simultaneously is also kind of a big deal. Their API is also pretty amazing tbh.
I wish all my friends were on tg instead of wa and i would uninstall the later in a heartbeat.
[+] [-] TacticalCoder|4 years ago|reply
Big thumbs here to TG: I don't use WhatsApp. Never installed it, never will. TG is not just about "not being FB": the UI is really cool and the synch between several devices (say phone and laptop) is flawless.
Now... You wrote "easy to remain anonymous" but AFAICT you cannot register a TG account without a phone number? Or can you now? As in: can you only download the desktop app and do all your messaging from you computer, without ever installing anything on your phone and without ever giving out a phone number for verification?
[+] [-] amelius|4 years ago|reply
Why not? Why allow any third party to collect data on you and store it for an unlimited time?
[+] [-] ai_ia|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] AlfeG|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] divs1210|4 years ago|reply
Even E2E encryption is supported via the Secret Chat feature!
Telegram is pretty good.
[+] [-] whyoh|4 years ago|reply
Its legal domicile is in the UK.
[+] [-] obiwan14|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] 0x38B|4 years ago|reply
“Many users have suggested introducing the ability to disable official advertisements on Telegram channels. Today we are announcing two more changes:
1. Users will be able to disable official advertisements.
We have already started work on this new feature and look forward to launching it this month. It can be issued in the form of an inexpensive subscription, which will allow any user to directly financially support the development of Telegram and never see official advertisements in the channels.
2. Channel authors will be able to turn off official advertisements in their channels for all users.
Some channel creators would also like to "turn off" advertisements in their channels for all users. At the moment, we are calculating the economic conditions for this option. Advertisers will soon be able to place an "invisible" ad on any channel that - assuming there is sufficient cost per impression - will result in no ads on that channel.
Let me remind you that Telegram as a messenger will always be free of ads:
Telegram will not show promotional messages in your chat list, private conversations or groups. Advertising will affect only large channels - services where there is already advertising, and the support of which leads to the greatest costs on the part of Telegram.
We will continue to work on features that will allow Telegram to break even. The interests of users and content authors will remain our priority in this process.”
1: https://t.me/durov_russia/36
[+] [-] johnchristopher|4 years ago|reply
> You appear to be using an ad blocker that may prevent pages on the Telegram Ad Platform from working as expected.
> Please turn off your ad blocker or add promote.telegram.org as an exception to manage your promoted messages. > Close
Oh, well ^^
I was a Telegram user for year until I completely switched to Signal 2.5 years ago.
I'd pay 1-10€ a year for a Telegram experience with e2e and without ads.
Why can't the old WA model be used ?
[+] [-] maverwa|4 years ago|reply
Sure, you and I may be happy to pay this, and may even fork out the fee for our loved ones, but how many other people would do that?
[+] [-] danpalmer|4 years ago|reply
I don't think WhatsApp was profitable on that model, and they also had surprisingly low costs (due to great server tech, small team) that I suspect Telegram can't match.
[+] [-] dymk|4 years ago|reply
One thing concerns me though (if I were to ever end up wanting to advertise) - no external links! Giving the audience to the thing I’m advertising is most of the reason I’d spend money on an ad.
I wonder what sorts of ads are useful if they’re text-only? They qualify no “external” links, so maybe you could still have links to another product-specific channel where there are external links?
[+] [-] jeroenhd|4 years ago|reply
Context-based advertising is great for web content (and should have been made the standard years ago), but in a chat room, I'm not so sure.
How does Telegram pick the relevant "topic"? From the channel description alone? I don't think that would be accurate at all. They do it for now, but who knows what will happen in a year or two! Their profit margin is on the line, after all.
I know Telegram can read along with most messages sent through their platform, but up to now they didn't have a reason to do it. Now, I'm not so sure.
[+] [-] capableweb|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whimsicalism|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fold3|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] captn3m0|4 years ago|reply
>To ensure and maintain high quality of ad content, a minimum advance payment of €2,000,000 is required to launch ads on the Telegram Ad Platform.
>Of this payment, Telegram holds €1,000,000 as a deposit, and makes the remaining sum available to the advertiser to spend on displaying ads.
>If the contract is terminated and the advertiser spent less than €10,000,000 on ads within the preceding 12 months, the €1,000,000 deposit is withheld by Telegram.
>If the contract is terminated and the advertiser spent more than €10,000,000 on ads within the preceding 12 months, the €1,000,000 deposit is returned.
This seems like a solution to Telegram's cashflow problem - doesn't look like it has much runway left.
[+] [-] cube00|4 years ago|reply
I wonder how this will go down with advertisers used to the usual pay-per-click and being able to demographically target their audience before spending their ad dollars.
[+] [-] rgavuliak|4 years ago|reply
That depends, some platforms already have their demographics skews so that might be indicative
> pay-per-click
Most platforms even tracked conversions with their pixels, but that will become a no-no as we're nearing the death of the 3rd party cookies. Companies will most probably start relying on Market Mix Models that model the impact of investment into ads on different channels on Revenue also taking into account things such as effect lags etc. Facebook has recently introduced an open source solution for this. I work for a company that also provides their own solution as a part of our platform and the interest is definitely picking up, so this issue might become less of an issue due to how the overall advertising ecosystem evolves in the next few years.
[+] [-] ComodoHacker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laurex|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flipdot|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SergeAx|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] skinkestek|4 years ago|reply
As far as I can see it didn't attract many upvotes in the meantime so I guess flag abuse was detected.
[+] [-] saura|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cik|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] strogonoff|4 years ago|reply
Meanwhile, ad-driven model is a much more comfortable and reliable source of profit (since you are popular and free, users won’t leave, so no need to work hard fighting for customers).
Imagine if instead of three whales we had a variety of paid messengers, all forced to interoperate with each other and offer APIs for third-party client software because that’s what paying users requested.
[+] [-] ComodoHacker|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] timeimp|4 years ago|reply
But a question to HN: why have we not seen a mass-market adoption of a P2P, non-centralised messaging system that requires no external services to work?
Mesh and other sorts of networks are cumbersome and have not reached mass-market adoption, so what (technically) is stopping a true E2E P2P platform?
[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|4 years ago|reply
The fact that nobody really wants a true p2p platform: you don't want to lose all your stuff if you lose the device. It is clear that federated services like email are superior for most users bar some real hardnuts mindfixed on privacy.
[+] [-] _def|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bigger_inside|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cunidev|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dmitriid|4 years ago|reply
- it came as a hidden message at the very end of the message timeline
- it broke unread count on many clients (since it was hidden, it was unread, and there were no notifications other than the unread count on the app's icon that wouldn't go away)
- the test messages ended with "how will it affect you/users?) and instead of leading a post with an answer, it simply dumped you in Pavel Durov's chat
- they looked exactly as any other message in the timeline with no indication it was an ad
Presumably all this will be fixed, but people are kinda pissed.
[+] [-] swarnie|4 years ago|reply
I've only ever heard it used when talking about batshit American cults.
Not exactly a target audience i want to reach.
[+] [-] reilly3000|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] IceWreck|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vadfa|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Andrew_nenakhov|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dpq|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ckastner|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stereoradonc|4 years ago|reply
There's a cost involved - it depends on the number of subscriptions. Though, from my rough estimates, 1 in 5 subscribers end up getting it. There are detailed channel statistics that measure the impact of each post made.
I notice the discussion here is being done by most users, who don't have channels or not on Telegram either. There has been a gradual acceptance of Telegram here, which is vying for a serious social media alternative. WhatsApp plans to roll out "Communities" in response to Telegram channels. However, its ownership is nuclear waste.
They have several innovative features in pipeline. I use channel to relay video calling (I can record it and host unlimited users). The video calling has improved by leaps and bounds in past several weeks and has become a serious alternative to Facetime.
[+] [-] DeathArrow|4 years ago|reply
That's really, really great. :)
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] ksec|4 years ago|reply
Another day HN are extremely happy to see Telegram getting ads to support their services. Because they are competing with Facebook / Whatsapp.
May be after all it isn't Ads are evil or bad, it is ads from Facebook or Google are bad?
[+] [-] thomcano|4 years ago|reply