Why Telegram Ads Right Now Is the Best Way to Launch Advertising in India

Hi, this is Max, the founder of the Telegram Ads promotion agency SMITLINK. In this article, I’ll explain why right now you have a unique window of opportunity that lets you get high-quality traffic from India at a VERY low price.

Many people don’t know this, but Telegram Ads has very recently launched the Euro-account (“euro-cabinet”) for the Indian market. And this update completely changes the rules of the game!

What it is, what capabilities have appeared, and why it’s so important to enter the euro-cabinet right now — I’ll break it down in this article.

But first things first.

• A colossal audience that keeps growing fast.

In India in 2024–2025 there are roughly 886–900+ million active internet users. And this figure continues to grow rapidly. Both the country’s population and the share of internet users are increasing at high speed.

• Telegram is a primary information source for a huge part of the population.

India accounts for about 20% of all Telegram users (globally — around 1 billion MAU). That gives up to 200 million messenger users in the country. Moreover, Telegram is especially popular among educated urban youth.

• Household welfare is growing quickly, especially in large cities.

Don’t think of India as a poor country whose residents simply don’t have money for your products. The country shows strong income inequality between major cities and rural areas. And while residents of less developed regions really cannot boast high wages, educated Indians from large cities have enough disposable income to buy a wide variety of goods, products, and services.

At the same time, the new Telegram Ads tools allow you to split the audience by city of residence, which lets you tailor ads to the most solvent segments. And given the country’s huge population, we are talking about many millions of people. Meanwhile, India is experiencing rapidly accelerating economic growth related to both internal development and positive global trends (for example, the mass relocation of manufacturing from China).

• Low competition.

Despite Telegram’s popularity in the country, mass advertisers have not yet mastered Telegram Ads’ euro-cabinet. As a result, right now you can obtain quality traffic at prices that are unthinkably low for any other direction.

India is a market with an incredibly large audience that is becoming more and more solvent. Buying traffic now can not only deliver a high return, but also lay a solid foundation for the future.

Until recently, for the India region you could run ads only through the TON account in Telegram Ads.

As the name suggests, the TON account is a platform where advertising is paid for in Telegram’s own cryptocurrency — Ton.

The Euro account, in turn, works with fiat currency — euros.

The Euro account offers far more options for using ad formats and more precise targeting, which is especially important in the Indian market.

Working through the TON account, we buy placements in specific Telegram channels and cannot separate which cities our users should come from. Therefore, the TON account is better suited for large-scale reach campaigns, especially for international digital products.

With the Euro account, our capabilities move to a completely different level. We can:

• Target subscribers of specific channels, but show them ads in other channels they are subscribed to.

“Distill” English-speaking audiences and show them ads only in India.

• We can collect people from English-language channels but restrict impressions to India as the geo. This is convenient for IT/fintech/edtech offers where English is the product language and LTV is formed by the Indian market.

• Use pinpoint language targeting (as is well known, India is a multilingual country and, in addition to English, citizens from different regions actively speak their own dialects).

• Use additional ad formats — graphic banners, video, ads in the search bar, as well as sending users to external websites.

A surprising and paradoxical situation has arisen in the Indian market right now.

Usually, in regions where both the TON account and the Euro account are available, the market develops as follows:

But right now in the Indian market, a surprising situation has emerged — traffic in the Euro account is significantly cheaper than in TON.

The main reason is that advertisers simply haven’t mastered the new tool yet. While a campaign via the TON account can be launched independently without prior setup, you can access the Euro account only through a partner advertising agency and with a minimum budget starting at €500.

Mass advertisers either aren’t aware of the new options yet or haven’t figured out how to connect to the new system.

As a result → the Euro account not only offers more capabilities and a higher-quality audience, but also offers cheaper traffic, because auction competition is almost non-existent.

The cost to start a bot/channel action can quite realistically begin at €0.01 (one euro-cent) and remain in the 0.01–0.06 range with the right offer → creative → targeting combination.

Take a look at the results of our recent ad campaign (niche — “gambling,” funnel in a chat bot).

And here is another example of our case that we launched to the Indian market over the past week:

Niche: Cryptocurrency (signals)

CPS: €0.06

Total spend: $200+

India is heterogeneous. You need to be able to separate:

The Euro account makes it possible to do this cleanly and controllably: interface language, channel-based segment, city/agglomeration, device — and a separate mini-funnel for each segment.

By no means should you wait for auction bids to accelerate. First movers are taking a lot of cheap traffic right now — this is a rare window of opportunity.

Do you want to understand how the Euro account in India will help your business reach its target metrics? Write to us right now! We will analyze your project for free and tell you how you can use the new Telegram Ads capabilities.