Telegram Ads bringing clicks but fewer telegram joins

Hey everyone,
Started testing multiple telegram ad campaigns and noticed something that does not make much sense.
Some ads get a very high CTR and lots of clicks but the actual conversion are ends up being worse than campaigns with lower CTR. At first i thought it was the creative but i have seen it happens across different audiences and offers.
It feels like optimizing for clicks alone is sometimes bringing lower quality traffic.
Has anyone else experienced this? What metrics are you paying the most attention to when evaluating Telegram ads performance beyond just CTR?

Hi @OnyxWalker

Yes, I have seen this many times.

A high CTR only tells you that people are clicking. It does not mean they are the right audience. Some ads create curiosity clicks, but those users never join the channel or engage after joining.

When evaluating telegram ads, I pay much more attention to subscriber cost, join rate, retention, and engagement after the join. I would rather have a lower CTR with high quality subscribers than a high CTR with people who leave immediately.

Yeah , sometimes ads with slightly lower CTR can produce better results because they attract users who are genuinely interested and more likely to join and stay engaged.

I would say that A high CTR only indicates you that people are interested enough to click but it does not guarantee that they are right audience for your telegram channel or offer.

My suggestion would be to optimize for qualified joins rather than clicks. testing different ad copy , audience targeting and channel description can often improve conversion rates even if CTR decreases slightly.

I have seen it myself. A high CTR can sometimes just mean that the ad is attracting curiosity clicks rather than people who are actually interested in taking action so looking at conversion rate, cost per conversion, and what people do after they click helps. and sometimes the campaign with lower CTR but higher quality traffic is the real winner.

i have seen this happen quite a bit. A high CTR usually means the ad is getting attention but it does not always mean the audience is genuinely interested in joining. I tend to focus more on cost per join and join to join click ratio because those metrics usually tell the real story about traffic quality.

Hey

how do you even run ads on telegram ???

is theres a website ? or inside of tg?

seen this with telegram campaigns too. high ctr does not always mean quality traffic. i would focus on join rate, cost per quality member, retention after joining and user activity. sometimes a low ctr audience brings much better long term results.

Did you tried telegram ads for specific search terms?


try targeting search terms you might get better "telegram joins"

note: your channel must have enough informative content, so that user's find your channels worth joining

I have also seen this quite sometime. A high CTR does not always mean high quality traffic. For me, join rate and subscriber quality matter much more than clicks when judging a telegram ad campaign.

I have noticed something similar. A few campaigns got plenty of clicks, yet the conversions were not great. It made me realize that a high CTR doesn't always mean high-quality traffic.

You're reading it right, and it's one of the most common traps in Telegram Ads. CTR measures how appealing the ad is, not how qualified the click is. A punchy curiosity hook lifts CTR and pulls in a lot of people who were never going to join or convert, so click quality drops as click volume rises.

The thing to internalize is that a click isn't a join, and a join isn't a kept member. Your real funnel is impression, click, channel view, join, stay, convert. A high CTR with weak conversion usually means the leak sits past the click, either the traffic was low intent or the channel didn't close the join.

So beyond CTR, the metrics worth watching are cost per join rather than cost per click, the join rate which is joins divided by clicks, and retention, meaning how many are still there a week later. Cheap clicks churn out almost immediately. Above all, track cost per the action that actually matters to you, a start, a signup, a sale.

A couple of practical moves. Put a start parameter deep link on each ad so you can see which campaign drove real joins and conversions, not just clicks. And treat the channel itself as part of the ad, a strong pinned message and recent activity are what turn a click into a member. Then optimize on cost per result, and let a lower CTR campaign win if its downstream numbers are better.

Best,
Floqal

@OnyxWalker everyone here is right about curiosity clicks but another thing to look out for is bot traffic... especially if you are using third party networks or broad targeting. if you get crazy high ctr but absolute zero engagement after, you might just be getting junk clicks from click farms.

one way to filter this is using a gatekeeper bot or a simple bridge page before they get to the main channel. makes them do a basic action like solving a captcha or pressing start. yeah your join rate drops a bit but at least you know the ones who make it through are actual humans with some intent. saves a lot of budget tbh. also check which channels your ads are actually showing on if you can, some placements are just notorious for click fraud.

These days I pay a lot more attention to conversions, CPA, and the quality of the traffic rather than just clicks. Those numbers usually tell the real story.

This is a common issue with Telegram ads. A high CTR does not always mean high-quality traffic. Many users may click out of curiosity but never join because the channel value or landing experience does not match their expectations. I would test different ad angles, target relevant channels and improve the Telegram channel preview for better conversion.