Anna VoroninaWe're Evido by Aitarget, a Telegram Ads reseller. We have an exciting case study to share with you.
Our Central Asia brand Adhand teamed up with digital marketing studio BrainStat to promote a high-ticket crypto investment course. Using Telegram ad campaigns, the BrainStat team achieved breakeven in just two months after launch.
The case includes not just numbers and strategy but also Q&A sections with Mikhail Krotov, CMO at BrainStat.
Here's what we'll cover:
- how to tell fake channels from real ones,
- why using emojis in creatives didn’t work,
- which UTM tags help you dig deeper into analytics,
- and several tactics you can apply to your own launches.
About the project
BrainStat partnered with a client who sells educational courses on crypto investing. The course teaches modern investment strategies while helping students save time.
The product funnel had three stages:
- A free 90-minute webinar as the entry point
- A tripwire product to test the audience’s willingness to pay
- The course.
Between purchasing the tripwire and the flagship product, the client ran a 3–4 week warm-up period with educational materials and personal consultations. The conversion rate from tripwire to the course was around 20%.
The target audience: men aged 25–45 interested in crypto and investing, looking for a ready-made strategy that avoids complex calculations and requires minimal time commitment.
Advertising challenges in crypto
The BrainStat team faced three typical challenges of the crypto space.
The first challenge — a huge number of fake channels with inflated metrics. A channel might show 50,000 subscribers, but actual post views wouldn’t exceed 200–300, leading to an ER (Engagement Rate) of just 0.4%.
The second challenge — an oversaturated audience that’s seen thousands of crypto course offers. Standard creatives with expert photos and calls to "make money on crypto" had CTR rates of just 2–3%.
The third challenge — a high acquisition cost, which in the crypto niche is 2–3 times higher than in other educational verticals.
Q: How did you learn to spot fake channels? Are there any red flags to watch out for?
We use Telemetr and pay attention to the following details:
- The history of the channel’s name and description changes
- The admin’s contact info (if the same contact appears across multiple channels, it’s likely a network)
- Audience growth and loss trends
- Ad placements in the channel.
Channel selection strategy
After struggling with low-quality traffic from fake channels with inflated stats, BrainStat completely overhauled its approach to selecting Telegram channels for advertising.
Shifting from quantity to quality
Instead of buying traffic in bulk, the agency implemented a strict channel filtering system to attract high-quality visitors rather than bot clicks.
Channel selection criteria included:
- Minimum ER: 30%
- Optimal ER: 50% and above
- Manual check of every channel
- Use of Telegram channel directories: TGStat and Telemetr
- Comment activity assessment
- Searching for channels and bots where competitors advertise via the Telegium spy tool.
Audience segmentation
The team categorized channels based on how interested their audiences were in the course:
- Hot segment — subscribers of competitors and specialized crypto education channels. This audience was already familiar with educational products in the niche and ready to buy.
- Warm segment — subscribers of general trading channels. These users were interested in financial tools but needed more warming up before switching to crypto.
- Additional segments included narrower topics like crypto arbitrage, mining, crypto exchanges, and general investment communities. These were used to expand reach and find unexpected entry points.
Q: How do you find channels for these “additional segments” like mining or arbitrage? Any secret sources?
Telegram has built-in suggestions: "Similar channels" and "Similar bots", plus we use our own parser for channels and bots.
Creative strategy: thinking outside the box
The BrainStat team rejected standard approaches and focused on unconventional visuals. The main focus was on images — text was secondary.
A breakthrough came from memes based on pop culture. A creative featuring The Matrix used the iconic red vs. blue pill scene: the blue pill meant "living paycheck to paycheck", the red pill meant "earning with crypto". The CTR for this creative reached 12%, four times the niche average.
Another strong performer was a Harry Potter creative — the scene in Gringotts bank with piles of gold and the caption “Me when I got into crypto.”
They also tested contrasting visuals — an office worker at a desk versus a crypto investor with a laptop on a beach, emphasizing time freedom.
AI-generated images made in Soro underwent mandatory post-editing to remove the "AI look" and make them appear as natural as possible.
💡 Interestingly, emojis in creatives delivered the worst results and were removed from the campaigns.
How the ad campaigns were configured
Campaigns launched with minimal budgets — €0.70–1.00 per campaign. If there were clicks without registrations, an additional €1–2 budget was added to test the hypothesis further. Decision-making was clear: if there were registrations — scale to similar channels; if no results after 300–400 impressions — stop the campaign.
The launch strategy had two stages:
- Initial testing in the "Channels" format, showing ads in selected channels
- Duplicating successful campaigns in the "Users" format, targeting subscribers of high-performing channels
All analytics was based on detailed tagging with UTM parameters. Budget distribution: 80–85% toward scaling proven combos, 15–20% toward constantly testing new channels and creatives.
Q: Can you show an example of a real UTM tag you use? How deeply do you go into analytics?
In our UTM tags, we include: ad placement, channel username, traffic source (TG Ads), offer number, image presence, emoji presence. Later we analyze and optimize based on all parameters — with a focus on lead cost and ROI.
Campaign results
Lead cost steadily improved. From an initial €11 per registration, it dropped to €9 after a month (–18%) and reached €7 in the second month (–36% from the start). The goal is to bring it down to €5.
The project reached breakeven by the second month. The first sales of the flagship ₽180,000 product came in as early as April. CTR rose from 3% to 10% thanks to the creative approach.
The conversion funnel stabilized at:
- CTR: 9–10%
- Click to registration: 10%
- Registration to tripwire: 10%
- Tripwire to main product: 20%
Key takeaways
The main takeaway: In competitive, oversaturated niches, creativity wins over convention. Memes, humor, and recognizable cultural references catch attention and stop the scroll better than claims of “expertise.” The audience is tired of straightforward ads and responds more to emotion than to dry arguments.
Second: Traffic quality is more important than volume — especially in crypto. Bulk buys on questionable platforms burn budgets fast. Manually selecting channels with real, engaged audiences is critical to success.
Third: A systematic approach and ongoing testing bring results even in the toughest niches. Heavy use of AI for creative production sped up testing and helped find formats that performed quickly.
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