PropellerAds says Telegram Mini App advertising is entering a harder, more structured phase. A year ago, the market was driven largely by rapid user spikes, crypto excitement, and game-led traffic. New material from the company suggests that policy changes, moderation, and legal caution now play a larger role in deciding which products stay visible and which ad models remain viable.
Telegram’s open phase is narrowing
Mini Apps helped turn Telegram from a messaging service into a broader commercial platform, with games, wallets, tools, and shopping functions all living inside one app. That growth was fast. PropellerAds says Telegram’s overall audience rose from 900 million to 1 billion monthly active users between March 2024 and March 2025, giving Mini Apps a large potential user base.
Growth, however, brought more scrutiny. One major turning point was Telegram’s push for crypto Mini Apps to move toward TON, its native blockchain layer. According to the report, developers who failed to adapt often faced weaker visibility or reduced functionality. That change appears to have made the crypto segment smaller, but more selective.
PropellerAds also points to increased pressure on iGaming Mini Apps and the spread of unofficial compliance checklists written by law firms, consultants, and developer groups. Those guides emerged because moderation outcomes were becoming harder to predict, while Telegram’s formal documentation remained limited. Privacy language, payment disclosure, and licensing issues started to matter more than they had during the market’s earlier growth phase.
Geography and fraud are shaping ad decisions
Telegram’s commercial potential now depends more heavily on local conditions. PropellerAds says restrictions in countries such as Vietnam, Nepal, and Kenya created regional drops in traffic during 2025, even while global activity stayed relatively stable. That means advertisers can no longer look at Telegram as one uniform market. They have to ask where access is dependable and where policy risk is rising.
Fraud remains another major concern. Telegram has long been associated with fake channel metrics, cloned administrators selling ad placements, and bot-inflated audiences. PropellerAds argues that Mini App advertising may be less exposed to those problems because ads are shown during real in-app activity rather than through channel inventory that can be artificially padded.
That logic helps explain why the channel still attracts buyers. PropellerAds says click-through rates in several markets remain high, often between 20 and 40 percent, while costs stay lower in many emerging countries than in Tier 1 markets. Those figures come from company data, but they support a broader point: advertisers appear willing to stay in the channel if the traffic looks more measurable and less vulnerable to manipulation.
Compliance may make the market more durable
The report suggests Telegram Mini App advertising is becoming less speculative and more disciplined. Utility, finance, commerce, and service-based products are taking on greater importance, while the loudest hype categories no longer define the market in the same way. That could make the channel less glamorous, but more usable.
For advertisers, that may be the central change. A market built on weak oversight can grow quickly, but it is harder to trust. A market under more pressure from moderation, fraud controls, and legal scrutiny may be tougher to navigate, yet easier to take seriously.
