Telegram’s Sponsored Messages began appearing in channels with more than 1,000 followers. The advertising system launched in October 2021 as Telegram introduced a way to monetize its large public broadcast channels.
These ads were designed for public, one-to-many channels rather than private conversations or ordinary group chats. Telegram described them as privacy-conscious and non-personalized: users viewing the same channel would generally see the same sponsored message, based on the channel’s topic rather than personal profiling.
The threshold is often phrased as “1,000+ subscribers” in Telegram’s own advertising documentation. “Followers” is a fair equivalent in this question because Telegram channels technically have subscribers, not followers. The number also refers to the channel’s audience threshold, not the number of people who must see an ad or the advertiser’s budget.