How to Spy on Telegram Ads: Competitor Research Guide#

Telegram Ads launched its self-serve platform in 2021 and has since become one of the fastest-growing programmatic channels in Eastern Europe, MENA, and Southeast Asia. With over 900 million monthly active users and channel-level targeting, it is an attractive surface for crypto, fintech, gambling, and e-commerce advertisers. The flip side: your competitors are running there too, and their creative strategy is largely invisible -- unless you use an ads intelligence tool.

What is Telegram Ads Intelligence?#

Telegram ads intelligence means systematically collecting and analyzing the sponsored messages that appear in Telegram channels. Unlike Meta Ad Library or Google Ads Transparency Center, Telegram does not publish a native ad archive. That gap is what services like tgadsspy.com fill.

The data pipeline works like this: a pool of monitored channels is polled via the gramesh API every 30 minutes. When a sponsored message appears, it is recorded with full metadata -- creative text, banner image, CTA URL, advertiser domain, target channel, region, and timestamp. Over time this builds a longitudinal archive of every ad, every advertiser, and every creative variant.

What Data You Can Extract#

Each ad record in the Telegram Ads Spy archive contains:

• Creative text -- the full message body, including any formatting entities
• Banner image -- mirrored permanently (original gramesh signed URLs expire in 1 hour)
• CTA URL -- the destination link, usually the advertiser landing page
• Niche -- auto-classified: crypto, gambling, forex, e-commerce, etc.
• Geo / region -- which regional Telegram account delivered the ad (maps to country)
• First seen / last seen -- the date range during which the creative was active
• Advertiser domain -- extracted from the CTA URL, useful for grouping campaigns
• Payment source -- EUR Ads Cabinet or TON-based, inferred from the can_report flag

Step-by-Step: Using the Archive#

Step 1 -- Find a channel your competitor targets. If you know your competitor's niche (say, crypto trading), search for high-subscriber channels in that niche. Use the /ads search or paste a @username directly.

Step 2 -- Browse advertisers targeting that channel. The channel detail page shows every advertiser that has ever placed a sponsored message in it, along with creative previews and the date range.

Step 3 -- Click through to an advertiser. The advertiser page aggregates all creatives from that domain across all channels and regions. You can see how messaging has evolved over time.

Step 4 -- Download or export. Use the JSON API to pull records for your own analysis pipeline.

Creative Analysis Patterns#

Patterns repeat across niches because what converts in Telegram is well understood by experienced buyers:

Crypto ads lean on APY claims ("earn 18% APR"), FOMO triggers ("last 48 hours"), and trust signals (logos of auditors, partner exchanges). Short sentences, one bold number, one action verb.

Gambling and betting lead with bonuses ("200% deposit match"), urgency ("offer ends tonight"), and social proof ("2 million players"). Imagery is bright, high contrast.

Forex and CFD emphasize spreads ("from 0.0 pips"), regulation badges, and platform names (MT4/MT5). Longer copy than crypto, more technical vocabulary.

E-commerce uses product photography, discount percentages, and countdown language. Banner ads heavily outperform text-only in click-through.

Niche Monitoring#

Filter the archive by niche to see the competitive landscape at a glance. The niche classifier in Telegram Ads Spy uses regex patterns against creative text and CTA domain to assign one of 20+ categories. You can browse by niche at /ads?niche=crypto or via the API parameter niche=gambling.

Useful workflow: pull all active creatives in a niche for the past 7 days, sort by firstSeen DESC, and look for new entrants. A new domain appearing in a niche usually signals a fresh campaign launch.

Geo Targeting Intelligence#

Telegram Ads uses regional accounts to serve ads. Telegram Ads Spy maps each region to a country or language group. Filter by region to answer questions like:

• What creatives are running in Germany (DE) right now?
• Is a particular advertiser running different messages in Turkey vs. Russia?
• Which niches dominate the Arabic-language ad inventory?

Use the region parameter in the API or the region filter on the /ads page.

Setting Up Keyword Alerts#

The alerts feature (available in the Pro plan) lets you define a keyword or domain and receive a notification the first time a matching ad appears. Typical use cases:

• Monitor your own brand name for competitor conquesting
• Track when a specific domain re-activates after going dark
• Watch for new entrants using specific claims ("0% fee", "guaranteed")

API for Automation#

The public API at /api/v1/ads returns paginated JSON. Key parameters:

Parameter	Type	Description
niche	string	Filter by niche slug
region	string	Filter by region code
since	ISO date	Only ads first seen after this date
domain	string	Filter by advertiser domain
q	string	Full-text search in creative text

Responses include total, page, and an ads array with all fields documented above.

Methodology#

Data is sourced from the gramesh API, which provides programmatic access to Telegram's sponsored message delivery system. Telegram Ads Spy monitors a pool of 9,000+ channels across all major languages and regions. Each channel is polled on a tier schedule: high-subscriber channels every 30 minutes, mid-tier every few hours, tail-end every 72 hours.

Media (banner images) is mirrored to permanent storage within 5 minutes of first observation, so the archive remains browsable even after gramesh signed URLs expire.

The database currently holds 912 unique creatives from 557 identified advertisers, with 3,413 sponsored impressions recorded. Coverage is strongest in Russian, English, Arabic, Turkish, and Spanish language channels.

Live data is available at /api/v1/ads.

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Telegram Ads Spy Research · April 2026 · CC-BY-4.0

tgadsspy research (2026). How to Spy on Telegram Ads: Competitor Research Guide (2026). tgadsspy.com. Retrieved from https://tgadsspy.com/blog/guide-spy-on-telegram-ads-2026