Cost per Telegram subscriber: the number Ads Manager doesn't show

Why cost per click misleads

Clicks are cheap to get and easy to inflate. Some come from people who don't have Telegram, some from people who change their mind on the way, some from bots. None of them show up in your channel, and all of them lower your cost per click.

An ad can win on cost per click and lose on everything that follows. The only way to know is to follow each click all the way to the join.

The three costs to watch

• Cost per click: spend divided by clicks on your tracked link.
• Cost per first join: spend divided by people who joined for the first time. Rejoins are left out, because you already had those people once.
• Cost per kept subscriber: spend divided by first joins still in the channel after 7 days.

A worked example

Two ad sets, same channel, same week. The figures are an example, not a benchmark.

On clicks, ad set A is 40% cheaper. On subscribers who stay, ad set B costs about 45% less. Cut B after the first day and you would have kept the worse ad.

Where each number comes from

• Spend: Ads Manager.
• Clicks: your tracked link. Meta's link clicks also count taps that never load anything.
• First joins and who stayed: a bot in your channel, which sees joins and leaves as they happen.

Use it to decide

• Optimize campaigns on the join event, not on link clicks.
• Judge creatives and audiences on cost per kept subscriber.
• Give each ad set enough joins before you decide. A handful of joins can swing either way.
• Watch the share of rejoins. A high share means you are paying again for people you already had.

With TrackJoin

TrackJoin shows clicks, first joins, rejoins, leaves and who is still present, for each link. The first-join rate tells you at a glance which ads bring new people, and a rule can send Meta only the joins still there after 24 hours.