The social media platform Telegram has reportedly announced plans to monetize its platform to keep business operational, as it is approaching 500 million users’ base.

Founder Pavel Durov said that he is looking for new ways to monetize the platform. The company needs a minimum of a few hundred million dollars every year to keep the operation going. He added that the company wants millions of its creators and small businesses to thrive, improving the overall experience for users.

The platform, which recorded 400 million users in April 2020, will present its own ad platform for public one-to-many channels. This platform will respect privacy, be user-friendly, and enable them to cover the costs of traffic and server.

Sources cite that if the company monetizes large public one-to-many channels through Ad platforms, the admins of these channels will get free traffic in proportion to their size. Another way the social media platform could monetize its business is through premium stickers with added expressive features. The artists who develop these stickers will also receive a part of the profit.

Some analysts were also hoping that the company would monetize the platform via its blockchain token project. But after regulatory troubles and several delays, Telegram announced in May that it had decided to drop the project.

For this project, Telegram had secured USD 1.7 billion from numerous investors in 2018. It had also announced its plan to distribute its token, named grams, after the development of the blockchain software. The company offered to return USD 1.2 billion to investors in early 2020.

It is worth mentioning that all of the existing features of the platform will stay free. Telegram will not introduce ads in group chats or private one-to-one chats.

Source credit – https://techcrunch.com/2020/12/23/telegram-to-launch-an-ad-platform-as-it-approaches-500-million-users/