Ads in Telegram channels (β)

Note

The Adfox functionality for Telegram channels allows you to place only direct sales ads (you must have a placement agreement with an advertiser or an agency). Adfox doesn't assist in finding advertisers. For automated ad selection from Yandex Direct advertisers, use the Yandex Advertising Network.

How it works

To serve ads from Adfox, add your channel to the Yandex Advertising Network interface and allow a special bot to publish posts in your channel. The bot publishes ads in the time intervals you specified in the channel settings in the Yandex Advertising Network interface.

Note

Direct sales ads are shown regardless of the channel's moderation results in the Yandex Advertising Network.

Ads placed as part of direct sales take priority over ads from the Yandex Advertising Network:

  1. Ads from Adfox are selected first, taking into account the campaign settings, like campaign period, impression limits, and targeting by frequency and time.
  2. If no ads are selected in Adfox, the algorithms serve ads from the Yandex Advertising Network.

If necessary, ads from the Yandex Advertising Network can be restricted (using the CPM floor), blocked, or disabled.

What ads look like

An ad looks like an ordinary post in a Telegram channel and contains:

  1. Image or video
  2. Clickable title
  3. Post text
  4. Action button
  5. Labeling

Connecting direct sales for Telegram channels

Step 1. Add your channel and set it up in the Yandex Advertising Network interface

  1. Log in to your Yandex Advertising Network account.

    If you don't have a Yandex Advertising Network account
    1. Log in with your Yandex ID or register a new account.

    2. On the Adfox home page, click Join.

    3. Fill out the application form and click Send. You get access to the Yandex Advertising Network and Adfox interface.

  2. Follow the instructions to add your Telegram channel.

  3. Select the appropriate time intervals for the Telegram bot to publish ad posts in the channel.

  4. Enable the Connect Adfox option. In the Adfox interface, an advertising inventory (site, section, and placement) will be created for this channel.

  5. Click Next.

Step 2. Add the Yandex Advertising Network bot

  1. In the window that opens, wait for the Yandex Advertising Network to select a bot for your channel. Follow the link to the bot.

  2. Open the bot description. Click Add to Group or Channel and select your channel.

    If you only see the “Add to Group” button

    Go to the mobile app or do the following in the desktop version:

    1. Copy the bot name from the Username field.
    2. Go to your channel.
    3. Click Manage Channel → Administrators → Add Administrator.
    4. Paste the bot name that you copied into the search bar.
  3. A window with permission settings opens: allow the bot to post messages in the channel and save changes.

  4. In the Yandex Advertising Network interface, click Complete.

This will make the channel appear:

  • On the Telegram ads tab in the Yandex Advertising Network interface.
  • On the Sites tab in the Adfox interface.

Step 3. Create and place an advertising campaign in Adfox

Go to Adfox and add a campaign by following our instructions. Make sure to specify the following settings:

  • Campaign type: Guarantee.

  • Campaign name.

  • Advertiser.

  • Status: Active.

  • The method of counting impressions: Select which event should be counted as an impression:

    • Banners load: When a banner is picked from this campaign and displayed in the Telegram channel.
    • Post views (Telegram): Ad post views recorded by the Yandex Advertising Network bot.
  • Total impressions, day, hour: The maximum number of impressions within this campaign in the given time window. Note that the number of impressions must be specified taking into account the method of counting impressions, for example:

    • If you set Total impressions to 2000 in a campaign with the Banner load count method, your ad post will be published in the specified time windows until it reaches 2000 responses.
    • If you set Total impressions to 2000 in a campaign with the Post views (Telegram) count method, your ad post will be published in the specified time windows until it reaches 2000 views on Telegram. If this value is reached after the very first publication, the advertising post won't be published in the channel after that.

    Warning

    To properly set up ad impressions in Telegram channels, see our recommendations for placing direct sales.

  • Campaign period.

  • Labeling settings:

    • Marking procedure:

      • Submit data to state register to get a token and transfer data to the Russian state register (ERIR) via the Adfox interface. The erid parameter will be added to the click URL.

      • Do not submit data to state register: If at least one of the following conditions is met:

        • You don't have a direct contract for placing ads with contractors.
        • Ads will be displayed outside of Russia.
        • You place a token in a creative on your own and transfer data to the Russian state register via a different advertising data operator.
    • Advertiser information: specify the advertiser's legal name and details.

  • Placement: Find and select the Telegram channels where you want to run the created campaign.

  • Targeting: Set the campaign targeting criteria.

    Alert

    With Telegram campaigns, you can only target by frequency and time (by day of the month and by days of the week/hours).

    When setting up frequency-based targeting, keep in mind that a unique user will be a Telegram channel, not a channel user. For example, if you set an impression frequency of twice a week for your campaign, ad posts in each channel where this campaign is running aren't published more than twice a week. Each user of the channel can view ad posts an unlimited number of times.

Step 4. Add banners to an advertising campaign

  1. In the campaign you created, go to the Banners tab and click + Add.

  2. Then select:

    • Banner type: Telegram banner.

    • Template: You can create posts that contain images, videos, or only text. Select the appropriate template:

      • Post with image and text
      • Post with video and text
      • Text-only post
  3. Fill in the fields in the Contents block:

    • Image: Attach a GIF, PNG, JPG, or JPEG image to your ad post. Links to third-party resources are not supported.
    • Video: Attach an MP4 video to your ad post. Links to third-party resources are not supported.

      Note

      To increase the likelihood of your video autoplaying for the user, avoid adding videos larger than 10 MB.

    • Header: Post title (clickable).

    • Text: Post text. In addition to text, the field supports:

      Inline HTML elements
      Template markup Display in the post
      <b>bold</b> bold
      <i>italic</i> italic
      <code>val a=10;</code> val a=10;
      <s>strike</s> strike
      <u>underline</u> underline
      Links

      Here's an example of how to format a link:

      <a href='https://adfox.yandex.ru/'>Link text</a>.

      Clicks on such links are not counted in the statistics (unless you set up a special macro for event tracking).

      Available macros:

      %banner.reference_mrc_user5%

      Can be used to add a link from the Transition URL field to the post text.

      In the example below, an impression will occur with the %banner.reference_mrc_user5% variable being replaced with the https://adfox.yandex.ru link:

      %request.reference_mrc%@%banner.eventN%

      Can be used to add several different links and track clicks on each of them:

      1. Add links to the post text using HTML markup:

        <a href="http://site.ru">First link</a>
        <a href="http://site.ru/about/">Second link</a>
        
      2. Replace the href attribute value with the %request.reference_mrc%@%banner.eventN% variables, where N is the event number from 1 to 28.

        <a href="request.reference_mrc%@%banner.event1%">First link</a>
        <a href="request.reference_mrc%@%banner.event2%">Second link</a>
        
      3. After saving, go to the Events tab in the banner settings and set the correspondence between the links and events:

    • Action button: Text for the link to the advertised product or service at the end of the post.

    • Transition URL: Enter the link to the advertised product or service.

    • Delete post: Set to true by default, meaning the ad posts are deleted from the channel 46–48 hours after publication.

      You can prevent autodeletion by setting the value to false. In this case, the statistics will reflect:

      • Post views (Telegram) — only for the first week.
      • Clicks — all clicks as long as the campaign and banner are in the active status.
  4. If necessary, add the “Ad” or “Social ad” label and advertiser information:

    • From the Ad label list, choose Ad or Social ad to add the appropriate label to the advertising post. If your image or video design already contains a label, leave the Disable value in the drop-down list.

    • In the Domain field, specify the advertiser domain, and it will be added along with the “Ad” or “Social ad” label (as long as one of these labels is enabled).

    • To display the advertiser information, enable the Show banner menu option. This adds the advertiser information to the ad post.

    • If the creative has already been assigned a token via a third-party advertising data operator, provide it in the Third-party token field. The token will be added to the click link as an erid parameter.

  5. If you label ads via Adfox, fill in the Labeling block. The token will be added to the click link as an erid parameter:

    For more information about registering creative content in Adfox, see the instructions.

  6. Save changes.

Recommendations for direct sales placements in Telegram channels

When advertising direct sales, keep in mind that Adfox ads are served in the time intervals you've set in the channel settings in the Yandex Advertising Network interface. For example, if three time intervals are selected in the settings, the bot will request ads from Adfox three times a day.

Note

We recommend setting the campaign start time to 10–15 minutes before the time slot specified in the channel settings. You need this extra time to ensure that the campaign is active in Adfox, because the bot may start requesting ads right at the beginning of the time slot.

Choose one of the following options for ad placement:

  • To schedule ads based on specific time slots, go to the Custom settings for Adfox section.
  • To cap the number of ad posts per week, go to the General limits for Adfox and the Yandex Advertising Network section.

To publish Adfox ads in time slots selected in the channel settings, leave the Apply a restriction for Adfox posts option disabled. This ensures that the Maximum number of posts per week setting does not cap your Adfox post frequency.

Sample ad post selection:

To prevent excessive publication of the same ad post, consider doing one of the following at campaign setup:

Limit the campaign period

In the Campaign period field of the campaign settings, specify a particular day or time interval when the ad can be published in the channel.

Limit the campaign impression frequency in all channels

In the Impressions per day field of the campaign settings, specify the maximum number of impressions per day. For example, if you set 2 in this field, the campaign will be displayed no more than two times per day.

Limit the campaign impression frequency in a particular channel

You can limit the impression frequency at the placement level using limits or targeting:

When creating or editing a campaign, in the Placement section:

  1. Click Open to full screen.
  2. Find the channel in the list and specify the maximum number of impressions in the total/day/hour limits fields.

Once the set limit is reached, the campaign impression in this channel is paused until the next day/hour or stopped completely (if the Total limits setting is specified).

When creating or editing a campaign, in the Placement section:

  1. Find the channel and click next to its name. This opens the placement settings.
  2. 1. Select the Custom targeting profile.

    2. Without closing the placement settings window, click  next to the Targeting profile field.

    3. A new tab opens with targeting settings at the campaign placement level.

    4. Enter and save the settings. Go back to the targeting profile selection tab and click Save.

Alert

With Telegram campaigns, you can only target by frequency and time (by day of the month and by days of the week/hours).

When setting up frequency-based targeting, keep in mind that a unique user will be a Telegram channel, not a channel user. For example, if you set an impression frequency of twice a week for your campaign, ad posts in each channel where this campaign is running aren't published more than twice a week. Each user of the channel can view ad posts an unlimited number of times.

Limit the impression frequency for all campaigns in a particular channel
  1. Go to Sites. Select the channel and go to the placement settings: SectionsPlacements.

  2. Open the placement settings.

  3. Specify the maximum ad impression frequency in the channel:

    1. In the Number of impressions per period field, specify the maximum number of ad posts.
    2. In the Impression frequency period field, select a period.
  4. Save changes.

Set targeting by time: weekdays/hours or days of the month

In the campaign parameters, add targeting by time: by days of the week/hours or by day of the month.

To limit the overall frequency of ad posts in the channel for both Adfox and the Yandex Advertising Network, in the channel settings, enable the Apply a restriction for Adfox posts option in the Maximum number of posts per week field. Your ad posts might be published in any of the time slots selected in the channel settings. The total number of posts from both systems is capped by the specified limit.

Sample ad post selection:

In this case, we cannot guarantee that Adfox ads will be served exactly within the specified time slots. To ensure that the bot publishes ads according to the impression schedule, avoid setting too restrictive limits and targetings in Adfox.

Report on direct sales in Telegram

You can view the following statistics for direct sales ads placed in a Telegram channel:

  • Total ad requests.
  • Banners load: Banners selected for impressions in Telegram channels.
  • Post views (Telegram): Ad post views recorded by the Yandex Advertising Network bot.
  • Clicks: Clicks on links in ad posts.
  • Impressions: The number of impressions for the period.

To view statistics, use the reports:

  • Direct sales in Telegram (by channel). The report is available at the account level and presents statistics on campaigns for the selected period, grouped by channels.
  • Direct sales in Telegram. The report is available at the campaign and banner levels. It presents statistics on the selected campaign or banner grouped by day.
  • Direct sales in Telegram (by campaigns). The report is available at the site, section and placement levels. It presents statistics on the selected site, section or placement grouped by campaigns.

Disabling Yandex Advertising Network impressions

If necessary, you can disable ad impressions from the Yandex Advertising Network. To do this, in the Yandex Advertising Network interface:

  1. On the Telegram ads tab, open the channel settings.
  2. In the Connect Adfox block, disable Yandex Advertising Network impressions.

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