MTS AdTech and the social media management service LiveDune summed up the results of the year and analyzed the effectiveness of channels in the Telegram messenger. The number of unique users (MAUS) in the app reached 105 million in November 2025, and the average usage time reached almost 50 minutes per day. Blogs, video content channels and news aggregators showed the greatest engagement in 2025, while microblogs and medium-sized thematic channels with a regular audience of 100 to 500 thousand people became the most effective in terms of the number of subscribers.
Posts gain maximum coverage in the first week, regardless of the channel category. Interestingly, only 9% of subscribers view the post per day. At the same time, the difference between coverage in 7 days and in 15 days is not so significant, which makes the first week after publication a key period for analyzing the effectiveness of content. The study also revealed a clear dependence of the View Rate (VR), an indicator that reflects what percentage of subscribers have seen a post, on the size of the channel.
Blogs are the category with the most engaged audience, which is especially effective in micro and small formats from 10 to 100 thousand subscribers. Microchannels in the blogs category show VR up to 44% in 15 days, while small channels maintain a high level of 38% on average over the same period. In average blog channels (from 100,000 to 500,000 subscribers), VR is reduced to 36%, but the absolute reach reaches 74,000 people. Large influencer channels have been showing VR at 37% for two weeks and the maximum reach is on average at 344 thousand unique views per post, according to statistics from the LiveDune service.
The category "Videos and movies" is in second place in terms of coverage. However, the larger the site, the lower the engagement. Thus, microchannels lead with VR by 48% in 15 days, but in large channels with 500 thousand subscribers this figure drops sharply to 3% over the same period.
"News and Mass Media" ranks third among the categories in terms of audience engagement. This is a stable category with predictable engagement and good coverage at all levels. The average two-week VR in this category ranges from 16% in mass to 28% in micro and small channels.
Channels about marketing, advertising, PR, and technology, on the contrary, show the lowest VR among all categories, although they can be useful for targeting specialists in small channels and targeting a narrow b2b audience. Thus, technology channels with more than 100,000 subscribers provide only 7-10% View Rate (VR) in two weeks, while VR in medium-sized (100-500 thousand people) and large marketing channels is only 9% and 7%, respectively, in 15 days with a maximum average reach of 14.4 thousand people.
“This year Telegram has consolidated its position as one of the most popular and user-friendly content platforms. During the year, the site's influencer business grew by more than 30%. Russians prefer humor, travel, cooking, creativity and art, life hacks and tips, education and self-development, as well as sports and a healthy lifestyle. For high engagement, you should rely on microchannels in the categories of “Blogs”, “Videos and movies", and “News". Large channels in the “Blogs”, “News“ and "Technology" categories are suitable for wide coverage. In the Video and Movies and Technology categories, additional mechanics will be required in large channels to increase engagement,“ said Marina Kondrashova, CEO of Getblogger (part of MTS Adtech).
“This study once again confirms that Telegram is a much more multimedia platform than is commonly thought. The high engagement in telegram channels with video content may come as a surprise, but we came to exactly the same conclusions in another study on a similar topic. Then, when studying a sample of 8.5 million Telegram posts from the LiveDune database, we found out that posts with videos are leading both in terms of the average number of reactions and in terms of ERV engagement (how many people who viewed the post reacted to it). Of course, this is not advice to drop texts and shoot videos. But you shouldn't underestimate Telegram videos for a long time,” emphasizes Vadim Okorokov, a researcher of social networks at LiveDune.
Methodology
The study analyzed 5 categories of channels: 1) Blogs; 2) Videos and films; 3) Marketing, PR, advertising; 4) News and media; 5) Technology. The sample consisted of the 100 most popular channels of 4 types:
- Microchannels (up to 10 thousand subscribers)
- Small channels (from 10 thousand to 100 thousand subscribers)
- Small channels (from 10 thousand to 100 thousand subscribers)
- Large channels (from 500 thousand subscribers)
The average number of subscribers, average reach, and average VR per hour, day, seven, and fifteen days were analyzed.
The Telegram MAU indicator is calculated by MTS Big Data based on aggregated anonymized mobile traffic data.
Please note that this press release is based on materials provided by the company. AK&M Information Agency shall not be held liable for its contents, nor for the legal and other consequences of its publication.
