How I Acquired 77 Telegram Users for $10 with AdsGram
I had a working Telegram Mini App with zero users. Organic discovery was slow — a couple of people finding the bot through Telegram search over several days. I needed to know if paid acquisition worked on Telegram, and what it actually cost per user.
Budget: $10. Platform: AdsGram. Result: 77 new users at $0.13 per install. Whether that's good or bad depends entirely on what you're comparing it to, and whether those users do anything after arriving.
What AdsGram Is
AdsGram is a Telegram-native advertising platform. Advertisers promote Mini Apps, bots, and channels directly inside other Telegram Mini Apps. Users see an ad, tap it, and land in your bot or Mini App without leaving Telegram. No browser redirect, no app store, no friction.
Two sides of the platform:
Publisher side: If you run a Mini App with traffic, you can show AdsGram ads to your users and earn per impression or click. It's one of the ad networks available for Telegram Mini App monetization.
Advertiser side: You create a campaign, set a budget, target by language and geography, and pay per click (CPC) or per thousand impressions (CPM). Minimum budget: $10. That's what I tested.
Campaign Setup (And Why the First One Got Rejected)
Creating a campaign takes about 10 minutes. AdsGram's dashboard asks for: your bot username, a short ad copy, a thumbnail image, targeting options, budget, and bid strategy.
My first campaign got rejected without explanation. No error message, no feedback email. After some digging, I realized the issue: I'd set the target language to "All." Changing it to "English" and resubmitting got it approved on the second try.
The settings I used for the approved campaign:
The campaign ran for about 3 days before the $10 budget was fully spent. No daily pacing — AdsGram distributes the budget based on available inventory, which means spend can be uneven across days.
The Results
Three numbers that matter:
5.19% CTR. Above average for in-app ads. The ad creative was simple — the SpeedTap logo, a one-line description, and a "Play Now" button. Nothing sophisticated. The high CTR probably reflects the novelty of game ads inside Telegram rather than any brilliance in the copy.
$0.06 CPC. Six cents per click. 168 people clicked, 77 became actual users (opened the bot or played the game). The gap between clicks and installs (168 vs 77) means about 54% of people who clicked the ad actually engaged with the app. The rest presumably opened it, saw what it was, and left.
$0.13 CPI. Thirteen cents per new user. For context: mobile game cost-per-install benchmarks from industry reports typically range from $0.50 for hyper-casual games to $5+ for mid-core. $0.13 is significantly below even the cheapest benchmarks. Telegram's in-app ad ecosystem simply has lower competition and lower floor prices than the App Store or Google Play ad networks.
What Those 77 Users Actually Did
Cheap users are worthless if they don't do anything. Here's what happened after the campaign ended:
Peak DAU: 14. The highest single-day active users reached 14 during the campaign period. For a tap-speed game with no viral mechanics yet, that's reasonable but not exciting.
Share rate: 57%. This is the number I keep coming back to. Out of users who completed a game, 57% tapped the share button. Industry benchmarks for mobile game share rates run 5-10% for average and 20-30% for specifically viral games. 57% suggests the share mechanic is working — the "I got 24 seconds, can you beat me?" prompt resonates.
D1 retention: low. Most users played once or twice and didn't return the next day. This is the weakness. The game is inherently one-session for casual users — you play, you get a time, there's no progression system pulling you back tomorrow. The Phase 2 additions (daily challenges, difficulty modes, 1v1 challenges) were specifically designed to address this.
Monetag ad revenue from these users: $0.001. Five ad impressions total. CPM was $0.20, well below the $2-6 range for optimized rewarded interstitials. Monetag's algorithm needs thousands of impressions before it can optimize ad selection. At 77 users, it's serving generic low-value ads.
The Math: Does $0.13/User Work?
This is the question that determines whether paid acquisition makes sense for Telegram Mini Apps.
At current monetization rates, the math is absurdly negative. Acquiring users at $0.13 when each user generates $0.00001 in revenue is lighting money on fire.
But that math assumes current monetization stays constant. Three things could change it:
Monetag CPM at scale. The $0.20 CPM is based on five impressions. Ad networks optimize with volume. At 1,000+ DAU, CPM could climb to $2-5. That would change revenue per user from $0.00001 to something closer to $0.01-0.05 over the user's lifetime.
Viral coefficient. If 57% of users share and even 10% of those shares convert to new users, each paid user brings 0.57 × 0.10 = 0.057 additional users for free. At scale, this compounds. At 77 users, it's too small to measure.
Stars purchases. Zero purchases at 77 users doesn't mean zero at 7,700. Premium mode unlocks at 50 Stars ($0.65 equivalent) could generate meaningful revenue per paying user — if any paying users exist in a larger sample.
None of these are guaranteed. They're hypotheses that require more users to test. The $10 campaign was a probe, not a growth strategy.
What I'd Do Differently
Two changes for the next campaign, whenever I run one:
Target specific countries. The "worldwide" targeting meant I got users from geographies where ad CPM is lowest. Targeting higher-CPM countries (US, UK, Germany, Japan) would mean fewer users per dollar but more ad revenue per user. The economics might balance better.
Run the campaign after Phase 2. The MVP had one game mode and no retention hooks. Users who arrived during the campaign had nothing to come back for. Running the same campaign after daily challenges, difficulty modes, and 1v1 challenges exist would give acquired users more reasons to stay. Acquisition cost is the same; retention would be higher.
Is AdsGram Worth It for Telegram Mini Apps?
At $0.13 per install, the acquisition cost is genuinely cheap compared to any other mobile platform. The question isn't whether AdsGram is a good ad platform — it is. The question is whether your Mini App can monetize well enough to justify even cheap acquisition.
For a game with strong share mechanics (57%), the viral loop might eventually make paid acquisition unnecessary. The $0 infrastructure means there's no ongoing cost pressure. The sensible strategy: invest in the product (retention, monetization) first, then return to paid acquisition once each user is worth more than $0.13.
Related guides:
- Telegram Mini App Development Guide: From Zero to Live in One Day
- How I Cut My Claude API Costs by 80%
- The $0/Month Tech Stack That Runs All My Projects
Disclaimer: This blog documents practical workflows based on personal experience. Nothing here is financial, legal, or professional advice.
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