$168.9М—the Volume of the Advertising Market in Russian Telegram Channels in 2020

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At the same time, the TOP 10 categories account for 74.7% of the total advertising turnover in Telegram channels. Among the most popular are "Business and Finance," "Women's Section," and "Mass Media."

At the end of December, the Telegram Ad Exchange Telega.io completed large-scale research titled "Advertising Market in Russian-Language Telegram Channels" in partnership with Dmitry Kornilov, Doctor of Economics, Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences.

The main goal of the research is to determine the volume and prospects of the advertising market in Russian Telegram channels using exclusively objective data.

Reviews

M.A. Shushkin, Doctor of Economics, Associate Professor, Professor of the Marketing Department of the National Research University - Higher School of Economics

“From the point of view of the methodology for calculating the market capacity, the research was carried out correctly. The authors deliberately move away from subjective approaches to assessing market metrics, using exclusively objective data in their calculations."

Research Description

The study used two methods for calculating the volume of the advertising market in Telegram based on data from the Telemetr service and the Telega Exchange:

through CPC (the cost per post)
through CPM (the cost per mile)

According to this evaluation, the formulas were used for advertising turnover for one of the most popular categories among advertisers, "Business and Finance" and "Education."

The formula through the CPC yielded the exact value of the ad turnover in the Business & Finance and Education categories, and the formula through the CPM based on average values was an approximate one.

Comparing the results of calculations in the TOP 50 channels in terms of advertising turnover, the authors concluded that the values turned out to be very close (the error is within 3%).

To calculate the exact value of advertising turnover in all channels through the CPC, it was necessary to collect data on cost for an advertising post and their number per year for each channel. It is quite problematic since, at the moment, there are no corresponding Telegram screeners.

At the same time, the second formula, through CPM, allows you to make an approximate estimate using market averages.

Therefore, the authors of the research used the available data on Telemetr and Telega resources to calculate the volume of the Russian-speaking market at average values (via CPM).

As a result of calculations, the estimated volume of the Russian advertising market in Telegram channels for 2020 amounted to $168.9М.

Comments from the Team of Authors

Mikhail Raitsin:

“The growth of the native advertising market in Telegram not only in Russia but also in foreign markets is of great interest. It can be assumed that this year, the advertising market in Telegram channels in a number of countries will grow to a significant size. Among the likely contenders: India, Turkey, Brazil, Indonesia, Malaysia."

Dmitry Zaitsev:

“The market for native advertising in Telegram channels already has significant volumes. Looking at the obtained values, the recent announcement by Pavel Durov about the imminent appearance of an advertising platform in Telegram opens in a completely new way. The market is already huge, rapidly growing, with global potential. It obviously already has room for both native and classic advertising tools."

Dmitry Kornilov:

“The purpose of this study is not only to determine the volume of the native advertising market in Telegram channels but also to publish a detailed calculation methodology by which these calculations were made. Unfortunately, the volume of the advertising market is often assessed as unverifiable subjective methods. This is what we want to fix.”