Telegram Mini Apps were one of the more volatile corners of digital advertising in 2024 and 2025, lifted first by rapid user growth and speculative “tap-to-earn” behavior, then pulled back by policy changes and a more selective market. A recent PropellerAds report argues that the channel is now settling into something more stable: a smaller, less euphoric, but more measurable ad environment. That claim matters because Telegram itself says it now has more than 1 billion active users, giving Mini Apps a potentially large base even after the initial excitement faded.
From user spike to steadier usage
The report describes a familiar cycle in emerging platforms: a rush of audience driven by novelty, followed by a decline once the easiest incentives disappear. In the case of Telegram Mini Apps, much of the early surge came from crypto-linked and reward-based products that attracted large volumes of low-commitment traffic. PropellerAds says that by mid-2025, usage had moved into a lower but steadier range, with more repeat behavior coming from utility, finance, media, and service-oriented apps rather than pure hype products.
That distinction is important for advertisers. A market built on inflated activity can deliver headline reach without much commercial value. A market with fewer but more deliberate users may be easier to price, target, and measure. The shift also fits Telegram’s wider evolution. What began primarily as a messaging platform has increasingly taken on features of a commercial ecosystem, with Mini Apps, bots, payments, and channel-based media all competing for user attention inside the same product environment.
Regulation is replacing improvisation
The other reason the market looks different now is that Telegram tightened parts of the system in 2025. Its developer rules required existing Mini Apps using other blockchains to transition to TON by February 21, 2025, including asset and smart-contract migration. That did not affect every category equally, but it marked a turning point: Telegram was no longer simply hosting experimentation at the edges; it was shaping the infrastructure underneath it.
Outside the platform, some governments also moved against Telegram during 2025, creating country-level instability even as global use remained high. PropellerAds points to these restrictions as part of the reason Mini App advertising became more segmented by geography. For marketers, that means the question is no longer just whether Telegram has scale, but where that scale is durable, what kinds of products can survive moderation, and which traffic sources are less vulnerable to sudden policy shocks. That is a more mature market question than the early obsession with raw installs and viral spikes.
What advertisers are actually buying now
PropellerAds’s numbers suggest advertisers are treating Mini Apps less as an experimental side channel and more as a format with distinct cost and engagement profiles. In its report, the company says average click-through rates in key markets such as Brazil, India, Nigeria, the United States, and Germany ranged from the low 20s to above 40 percent, while CPCs remained far cheaper in many emerging markets than in Tier 1 geographies. Those figures are internal and should be read as directional rather than industry-wide benchmarks. Still, they support the report’s broader argument that the market is becoming easier to segment by audience quality, region, and use case.
The more credible part of that thesis is not the headline CTR number but the category mix underneath it. PropellerAds says finance, e-commerce, media, and utility-driven products are taking a larger role beside gaming and crypto. That suggests a channel beginning to behave less like a speculative rush and more like a working ad market, where formats, pricing, and vertical fit matter more than novelty alone. For now, Telegram Mini Apps remain a young advertising environment. But the period when every traffic spike could be mistaken for lasting demand appears to be ending.
