Telegram, the WhatsApp competitor, has been growing rapidly this year, and is now approaching 500 million users, founder Pavel Durov said. Now, after its plans of starting a cryptocurrency platform have failed, the company will be rolling out an ad platform very soon, hoping to generate revenue by next year.
The messaging service has been in business for 7 years now, and has managed to form a great userbase, especially in India. However, so far, the business has been financed by the founder. But as the startup is scaling up, he is looking for ways to monetize the instant messaging service. To that end, the company plans on introducing ad-platform for public one-to-many channels. The platform will be “one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of server and traffic,” he wrote on his Telegram channel.
“If we monetize large public one-to-many channels via the Ad Platform, the owners of these channels will receive free traffic in proportion to their size,” he wrote. Another way Telegram could monetize its service is through premium stickers with “additional expressive features,” he wrote.
“In many markets the owners of such channels display ads to earn money, sometimes using third-party ad platforms. The ads they post look like regular messages and are often intrusive. We will fix this by introducing our own Ad Platform for public one-to-many channels – one that is user-friendly, respects privacy and allows us to cover the costs of servers and traffic,” Durov added.
The founder further stated that Telegram will not “sell the company” like WhatsApp did and ensured its users that it is committed to an independent atmosphere. He also stated that the change will be seamless and will not hinder the enjoyment of the apps by the users.
Some analysts had predicted that the company would monetize its platform through its blockchain token project. However, the service ran into legal troubles earlier this year, and Telegram was fined $18.5 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which accused the company of wrongful practices. After that, the company abandoned the project. Thus, this ad platform is Telegram’s last hope, at least for now.
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