Telegram CEO and founder Pavel Durov announced today that the company is launching its ad platform next month, allowing channel owners to receive financial rewards. The company will pay out rewards using toncoin on the TON blockchain. Channel owners will start receiving 50% of all revenue that the company makes from displaying ads in their channels.

The ability to broadcast public messages to a huge audience is one of the capabilities of Telegram channels. Durov says that although there are one trillion views on broadcast channels on Telegram every month, only 10% of those views are monetized using Telegram Ads, its promotion tool. In March, the Telegram Ad Platform will open to channel owners in nearly one hundred countries, marking a major shift toward content monetization.

Apparently, the company is still not ready to share any criteria for revenue sharing, according to TechCrunch.

"To make ad payments and withdrawals fast and secure, we will use only the TON blockchain," Durov wrote in his announcement post on Telegram. "Similar to our approach with Telegram usernames on Fragment, we will sell ads and share revenue with channel owners in Toncoin. This will create a virtuous circle, in which content creators will be able to either cash out their Toncoins — or reinvest them in promoting and upgrading their channels."

The TON token surged close to 40% to above $2.92 as soon as the news broke, and at the time of writing is resting at $2.65.

With this last update, Telegram will come along with YouTube and X-also formerly Twitter, sharing ad revenue with users. YouTube promises to give a 55 percent share of the ad revenues earned by its creators while on the YouTube Partner Program; X began revenue sharing from July 2023. For Meta, the company was also testing a new model of payout for its Ads on Reels monetization program.

Telegram has more than 800 million monthly active users worldwide.