Most display advertising fights for attention against content the user actually came to see. Telegram Mini Apps ads for other Mini Apps are a different game: the ad audience is already inside a Mini App, one tap away from the next one. When the creative shows exactly what that next app feels like, click-through rates stop looking like display and start looking like recommendations.
This case is a tap-to-mine USDT app promoted on Adexium’s TMA inventory with a single vertical video creative. The verified seven-day review below recorded 7,449 bot-start events at $0.0216 per event. The original dashboard snapshot is preserved separately later in the article.
Verified campaign economics: July 21–27, 2026
Added October 7, 2026. We rechecked the same campaign against production impression, click and conversion records for July 21, 00:00 through July 28, 00:00 UTC. This is the last complete seven-day period before the original article was published, not the undated original screenshot preserved below. The cover now uses this verified seven-day review.
| Metric | Verified period |
|---|---|
| Advertiser spend | $160.92 |
| Valid impressions | 53,639 |
| Clicks | 19,758 |
| Bot-start events (L1) | 7,449 |
| Cost per bot-start event | $0.0216 (about 2.16 US cents) |
Cost per start uses the unrounded spend: $160.917 ÷ 7,449. Spend came from impressions; click spend was zero and conversion records had no additional charges. Valid impressions were counted with their sample rates (all were 1 in this period); invalid impression records carried no spend.
The largest GEOs by spend were Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Nigeria and the Philippines. This was a multi-country campaign, so the aggregate cost is not a quote for any one GEO.
What this establishes: a measured cost for the campaign’s tracked entry event. It does not establish unique acquired users, deposits, revenue, retention or profitability. Events are grouped by when they occurred; starts in this window are not necessarily from clicks made in the same window. No video-versus-static comparison was performed for this review.
For a first test: track the bot start separately from downstream actions and judge the campaign against your own acceptable acquisition cost and subsequent user activity.
Original dashboard snapshot
The screenshot below shows 1,067 starts, but does not include its date filter. We have not matched its precise window to production records, so we do not attach the verified period’s spend or cost per start to those 1,067 events.
| Metric | Value |
|---|---|
| Impressions | 7,572 |
| Clicks | 2,731 |
| CTR | 36.07% |
| Conversions (bot starts) | 1,067 |
| CR (click → start) | 39.07% |
Multiply the funnel through: 14% of everyone who merely saw the ad ended up inside the advertiser’s bot. For context, a typical static in-page creative converts view-to-click in fractions of a percent. Lifetime, the same video creative held a 40.48% CTR across 71.6K views, so this is the creative’s steady state rather than a lucky small sample.
(Conversions here are bot starts, the top of the advertiser’s funnel, tracked via click ID. Deposit economics happen downstream in the app; what this campaign optimizes is the cheapest possible qualified start.)
The creative that did it
The whole setup is one video and one button, and every element is doing deliberate work:
- It’s a screen recording of the product, not an ad about the product. The video shows the actual miner spinning, the USDT balance ticking up, the bonus flashing. For five seconds, the viewer is effectively using the app. Clicking START continues something already started.
- The reward mechanic is on screen in numbers: balance, mining rate, “+0.05 per tap”, passive income rate, BONUS. Crypto-curious TMA users don’t need persuading about the category; they need to see this app’s numbers.
- 9:16 vertical video with sound off and a 5-second skip timer, native to how the placement is consumed, no horizontal letterboxing, no dead air.
- The button says START, and the link is a bot deep link (
t.me/…?start=with a click-ID macro). The ad’s promise and the landing experience are the same word. Every start is attributed back to the campaign, so the CPA column is real.
Why this vertical + format combo runs this hot
Three compounding effects:
- Zero context switch. The user is in Telegram, the product is in Telegram. No app store, no signup form, no browser: the “install” is a bot start, which is why click-to-conversion holds at 39% instead of leaking 90% like a typical mobile-app funnel.
- Audience self-selection. People inside Mini Apps at that moment are, by definition, Mini App users: payment-enabled, tap-to-earn literate. The placement does the targeting.
- Video as a free trial. In a vertical where every offer claims easy earnings, showing the mechanic beats claiming it. The creative de-risks the click.
Takeaways
- In TMA-to-TMA advertising, the best creative is the product itself. Record it; don’t art-direct it.
- A 36% CTR is achievable, but only when ad, placement and destination are one continuous experience.
- Deep-link with click IDs from day one. 1,067 attributed starts is an optimizable dataset; “lots of clicks” is not.
- Use per-creative stats. Adexium tracks impressions and clicks per creative (up to 7 in rotation), so the 40% lifetime CTR here is a measured fact you can manage against and replace the moment it fades.
Crypto and tap-to-earn Mini Apps run on Adexium’s TMA inventory with video creatives, bot deep-linking and click-ID attribution out of the box. Upload a screen recording of your app and see what your real CTR ceiling is.
