Telegram Ads Changelog 2024–2026: Every Change by Date, with Sources

Telegram Ads changed more in the last two years than in the five before. It added placements in search, bots and the video player, and started paying channels through Suggested Posts. The payment coin was renamed, and reseller prices moved several times. Most of these changes were never announced in one place: some came from Telegram's blog, some from its developer docs, some only from resellers.

This log puts them in order. Dates are when a change was announced or first documented. Every entry links to its source, and changes reported by a reseller rather than by Telegram are marked as such.

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2024: the groundwork#

• 2 September 2024 — image and video ads for agencies. Media formats became available to agencies, with a minimum of €20,000 a month per format (tginfo).
• 25 November 2024 — ID checks on Fragment. Fragment began requiring verification to buy Stars, Premium and anonymous numbers (tginfo).
• 17 December 2024 — ads between posts. Sponsored messages began to appear between posts in channels (tginfo).

2025: new placements and direct deals#

• 7 March 2025 — Stars from paid messages can buy ads. Users and groups that earn Stars from paid messages can withdraw them via Fragment and spend the rewards on Telegram Ads; Stars become withdrawable 21 days after they are earned (Telegram blog).
• 26 March 2025 — TON as the payout rail. Pavel Durov called TON the exclusive way for millions of creators and developers to withdraw their earnings (Durov).
• 8 April 2025 — ads in global search. Advertisers can bid on up to 10 keywords of 4–32 characters; only channels and bots can be promoted; the starting bid in the euro cabinet was €1 (ppc.world). Search ads bought with TON were not shown in Russia, Ukraine, Israel and Palestine; ads bought with Stars were shown everywhere (tginfo).
• 15 May 2025 — ads inside bots (reseller report). According to the reseller OneSpot, euro and ruble cabinets can buy ads in bots with 1,000+ daily users, up to 9 bots or topics per ad, CPM from €1, without geo-targeting (tginfo).
• 3 June 2025 — direct messages for channels. Channels can turn on their own direct messages and charge for each message (Telegram blog).
• 1 July 2025 — Suggested Posts. Users can offer a channel a paid post through its direct messages, paying in Stars or Toncoin (now Gram). The channel gets paid 24 hours after publishing; if the post is deleted earlier, the money is refunded automatically (Telegram blog). The channel's share is 85% (Telegram API config).
• 11 July 2025 — ads in the video player. A text ad of up to 160 characters appears 5 seconds into a full-screen channel video, can be skipped after 9 seconds and closes after 30; the next one comes no sooner than 2 minutes later. Channels only, sold through agencies (tginfo).
• 31 July 2025 — profile rating. Profiles show a rating based on successful Stars transactions, which Telegram presents as a trust signal for Suggested Posts (Telegram blog).
• 15 August 2025 — bots join Suggested Posts. Bot API 9.2 lets bots handle suggested posts; paid posts must stay up for 24 hours for the payment to go through (Bot API changelog).
• 1 September 2025 — Russian ad ban takes effect. Part 10.7 of Article 5 of Russia's advertising law bans ads on resources with restricted access (Pravo.ru). See 2026 for how it was applied to Telegram.
• 19 October 2025 — lower reseller minimum (reseller report). eLama cut its minimum to €250 and says a direct contract with Telegram needs a budget from €2 million, €1 million of it held as a deposit (eLama).
• 31 December 2025 — pricier paid media. Bot API 9.3 raised the maximum price of paid media to 25,000 Stars and exposed a chat's paid-message price to bots (Bot API changelog).

2026: Gram, new floors and new rules#

• 9 February 2026 — Click.ru minimum. First top-up from €250 before commission and VAT (Click.ru).
• 17 February 2026 — Russian CPM floors cut by 30%. For Russian accounts in euro cabinets: €1.00 → €0.70, politics €0.50 → €0.35, media formats €1.50 → €1.05 (ppc.world).
• 25–26 February 2026 — first Russian cases. Russia's antimonopoly service (FAS) opened the first cases against two bloggers over ads on YouTube and in Telegram, although both had contracts, ad labels and erid tokens (The Bell).
• 5 March 2026 — FAS: the ban covers Telegram. The regulator confirmed that the September 2025 rule applies to Telegram; lawyers dispute this because Telegram is not formally blocked (Pravo.ru).
• 25 March 2026 — moratorium until the end of 2026. FAS said it would not apply penalties for ads in Telegram and on YouTube until the end of 2026; the pause does not cover Instagram, Facebook or VPN services (Pravo.ru).
• Since 18 May 2026 — ad policies rewritten. Compared with the copy archived on 18 May, the current guidelines extend profile requirements to accounts as well as channels and bots, add points 4.5–4.8 (including 4.8 on search keywords) and soften the language rule from "must be the same" to "should match" (current, 18 May 2026).
• 26 May 2026 — 11 new countries via eLama (reseller report). Thailand, Malaysia, Israel, the Philippines, Vietnam, South Africa, Morocco, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Egypt and Ethiopia, from a €500 deposit, CPM €0.30–0.70 depending on the country (eLama).
• 1 June 2026 — Toncoin becomes Gram. Durov announced that TON's native currency is becoming Gram, while TON remains the name of the blockchain (Durov).
• 15 June 2026 — the rename takes effect. At 12:00 UTC Toncoin became Gram and the ticker changed from TON to GRAM, after 81.22% of votes in favour; no swap or migration was needed (@gram).
• 21 July 2026 — Gram Wallet announced. A built-in non-custodial wallet for all Telegram apps (Durov).
• 5 August 2026 — operator data for targeting (reseller report). eLama opened a separate Telegram Ads cabinet using MegaFon subscriber data, with uploads of your own customer base (eLama).
• 18 August 2026 — a .gram domain zone. Telegram applied for a .gram top-level domain; ICANN approval is still needed (Durov).
• 28 August 2026 — new Russian CPM floors (reseller report). €0.60 when targeting a country or language, €0.30 for politics, €0.75 for channels, bots and search. There is no official Telegram announcement (eLama).
• 31 August 2026 — Gram Wallet rollout starts. Opened to a limited group, with a wider rollout over the following weeks (Durov).
• 15 September 2026 — Banner in Bot (partner report). According to MTS AdTech, a new format shows ads inside bots to a chosen audience: demographics, channel subscriptions, MTS data segments or your own phone list. The creative is text, a logo and a custom emoji, with no photos or video (AdIndex).
• 18 September 2026 — an API-token screen in the cabinet. The code of the Telegram Ads cabinet, last modified on 18 September, contains a screen for an API token with copy and revoke buttons and an IP allowlist (cabinet script). No public documentation has been published, so what the API can do is unknown.

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Where things stand on 23 September 2026#

Telegram's own pages do not fully agree with each other:

• The Telegram Ads homepage says you can pay with Gram and that private chats and contact lists are not used for targeting.
• The getting-started page still gives the minimum CPM as "0.1 Toncoin" and describes ads only in public channels with 1,000+ subscribers.
• The ad policies already cover bots, accounts, websites and search keywords.
• The Premium FAQ still calls sponsored messages "non-targeted".

When sources disagree, the newest dated document usually wins. For payments that is the homepage and fragment.com/ads; for what may be advertised, the policies.

What to watch next#

• Russia after 31 December 2026, when the moratorium on penalties is due to end.
• Gram Wallet reaching all users, which would make paying for ads in Gram simpler.
• Banner in Bot moving from partner cabinets to general availability.
• API documentation for the token screen, if Telegram publishes it.
• Reseller floors: Russian CPM minimums changed twice in 2026 without an official announcement.

For practical guides to each change, see the tgads.net blog. For analysis with data from a public ad archive, see the tgadsspy blog.

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FAQ#

Is Gram a new coin? No. It is Toncoin under a new name since 15 June 2026; the blockchain is still called TON and nothing had to be swapped.

Which changes came from Telegram and which from resellers? Placements, Suggested Posts, direct messages and the rename were announced by Telegram or Pavel Durov. CPM floors, minimum budgets, new countries and Banner in Bot come from resellers and partners and are marked as such above.

Does Telegram Ads have a public API? Not a documented one. As of September 2026 the cabinet code contains an API-token screen with an IP allowlist, but no public documentation.

Can Telegram ads still be bought for Russian audiences? Yes, through resellers. The ban on ads on restricted resources has applied since 1 September 2025, but the regulator said it would not penalise ads in Telegram until the end of 2026.

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Sources: Telegram blog, Bot API changelog, Telegram API config, Telegram Ads, ad policies, Durov's channel, @gram, tginfo, ppc.world, eLama, Click.ru, Pravo.ru, The Bell, AdIndex. Checked on 23 September 2026.