Telegram Changes Its Approach to Advertising Personalization

The messenger has updated its advertising platform. Now, advertisements can be shown based on the user's personal data, such as user's interests and location down to the nearest city.

According to Durov's Code, interests will be analyzed based on the list of channels a user is subscribed for. Advertisers will be able to limit the audience based on location data, which Telegram determines via the user's IP address.

Advertisers will be allowed to target ads to users based on a user database gathered outside of Telegram. For example, a store can provide Telegram with its scrambled phone number database to show a special offer only to their customers.

Previously, advertisers could only customize ad audience based on public data, for instance, displaying an ad only on finance-themed channels.

The new changes allow more frequent displays of more relevant ads, meaning you will start seeing finance-related ads in other unrelated channels if Telegram's algorithms think that you are interested in finance.

This same approach is used by other companies such as Google. Even though advertisers still will not receive raw information about the user, personal data is now involved in personalization.

Advertisers will be able to indirectly determine your affiliation to a user group only if you click on the ad link. If you ignore the ad, no data will be transferred.

According to Durov's Code, Telegram also plans to display advertisements on large private channels that misuse link access settings for profit.