Messaging app Telegram allows users to buy ads using Toncoin (TON) through a revenue-sharing program that rewards channel owners.
According to an announcement yesterday, Telegram users will be able to purchase ads on the platform to promote their bots and channels, with budgets starting from “a handful of Toncoins.”
Advertisers can choose the exact channels on which their Telegram ads appear, and channel owners with more than 1,000 subscribers will receive 50% of the revenue generated from advertisements shown on their channels.
The launch of Toncoin payments for advertising on the platform follows Telegram’s announcement of an advertising revenue sharing program earlier this year. In this program, profits are distributed to channel owners in cryptocurrency.
According to Sunday’s announcement, channel owners’ withdrawals will be available “in the coming weeks” through Telegram’s Fragment exchange.
“Channel owners can withdraw their rewards commission-free or reinvest them in Telegram ads, collectible usernames or premium prizes,” the company wrote.
What is Toncoin?
TON originally stood for Telegram Open Network, and Telegram engineers worked on the TON blockchain platform and the Gram cryptocurrency built on top of it. But the company abandoned its plans for the network due to a long-running dispute with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), which argued that its $1.7 billion ICO for Grams constituted an illegal securities offering.
After Telegram withdrew the project and refunded investors from the token sale, a group of non-profit community developers continued the open source project, renaming it The Open Network and launching Toncoin as the base currency. The TON blockchain has since been used to underpin projects such as gaming and meme coin Notcoin.
Telegram said it decided to use Toncoin for ad payments on its platform because of its “low fees” and “high transaction speeds.”