Channels on Telegram are, in my opinion, not equivalent to Facebook pages, Instagram profiles, or Twitter profiles. I believe channels surpass these concepts. Channels are more like a direct communication line to a brand or profile. It’s similar to email, where I send a message to my email list, and you receive it in your inbox. There’s no algorithm determining whether you should see it or not, or whether it should be shown at a specific time.
With this kind of direct access to an audience, the posts you make inside a channel must be of high quality. Posting intrusive ads on channels is therefore not a very smart approach.
Joining a Channel for a Reward
The concept of joining a channel to use a bot is where this trend of joining channels you don’t really want to join began. There’s no harm in this because the developer of a bot can then update users about new features through the channel instead of the bot, which is beneficial.
Notcoin took this to another level by asking users to subscribe to channels and receive rewards in return. This also doesn’t sound too bad in principle. However, it escalated to a new level with other clicker apps abusing this feature, asking users to join completely irrelevant channels and creating numerous such tasks. These tasks don’t even explain what the channel or project is about; they simply ask users to join, and users immediately return to the mini-app to collect their reward.
Here is Where the Main Problem Begins
Similar channels were introduced for Telegram ads to be more effective and for users to discover new channels with similar audiences. It’s an excellent feature. However, if clicker apps send completely random users who have zero interest in interacting with the channel, they become dead users on the channel, hurting both Telegram’s ad functionality and the similar channels experience.
It hurts Telegram ads more because the advertisers are getting charged for an audience who has no interest in the channel. But what is the main selling point of Telegram Ads? The main selling point is that all ads run on Telegram are effective because the audience in a channel is highly specific. For example, if there’s a channel about teachers on Telegram, I can run an ad on that channel and be confident that the subscribers are teachers. But if mini-apps are undermining this by sending random users to these channels, it significantly damages the ad experience.
There are vanity metrics in marketing. The number of users on a channel is a vanity metric. Having users who are not interested in the channel is a vanity metric. If you want to increase your channel subscribers, you might as well use a social media panel service to generate fake users. It’s essentially the same thing.
Telegram’s ecosystem is interconnected between creators, developers, and advertisers. Therefore, if you hurt advertisers, you also hurt your own channel in return. The more useless users you have, the more you have to spend on Telegram boosts. Will those uninterested, non-engaging users ever consider boosting your channel? Not to mention, most of these users will be non-premium users, and when you have more non-premium users, your global search rank also decreases.
If advertisers get poor results for their ads run in your channel due to these vanity metrics, they will stop advertising in your channel.
Should Telegram Intervene?
I think the issue will resolve itself by the time Hamstar goes live and the concept of mini-apps is no longer deemed to be such a great marketing strategy. I also believe that clicker apps have some merit as an initial marketing move to build a product. However, Hamster and Notcoin didn’t have this idea when they started. They just launched and then decided to pivot later. Clicker apps that emerge after the underwhelming results of the Hamstar listing (26th Sept) will prove to users and developers that clicker apps should not be general but focused. When you have a niche project, you can recommend subscribing to channels that are also niche-specific. The players will then actually appreciate the channels instead of being dead users. In short, Telegram has no reason to intervene as this will stop on its own.
In the unlikely scenario that Telegram wants to intervene, it could introduce a cleanup option for users. For example, something like “Least Engaged Channels” and a rule to leave them if the engagement is past 6 months or so. To be honest, such a feature wouldn’t be a bad thing for a channel. It would clean up the channel by removing inactive users from the audience, which can only increase the effectiveness of advertising results.
A Better Approach for Mini-apps
Mini-apps should seriously consider ensuring that users stay in those channels for extended periods before rewarding tokens. This will give users some time to engage with the channels. So instead of rewarding users right away, they should be rewarded at the end of the game (at the listing date).
This will create more engaged users and give them some time to absorb the content the channel posts. It’s still not ideal for advertisers, but it’s better than the current approach. I would also recommend that mini-apps never prompt users to rejoin channels if they’ve decided to leave a previously recommended channel after joining. Leaving a channel after joining signals that the user is uninterested or a vanity metric that has no benefit for the project you’re trying to promote.