Case study · Telegram Ads
VPN Service CAC from $15 to $5 in Telegram Ads: 3,763 Payments for $20,130
- Geo: CIS
- Trial: 3 days
Ad spend$20,130
Payments3,763
CAC$5.3
Conversion9.7%
9.7%conversion from bot launch to payment
$3.2–3.8CAC during the best weeks
The client is a VPN service in CIS selling through a Telegram bot with a free 3-day trial.
Goal: scale sales with CAC under $6.
What went wrong and how we fixed it
1. Starting CAC — $15
- Problem
- In the first days one payment cost $15.35 — nearly three times above target.
- Solution
- Every day we mass-launched campaigns targeting competitor channels and bots. Using our tool we set up auto-rules — expensive campaigns were paused automatically without manual checks.
Starting CAC $15.35Brought down to $5.3Best weeks $3.2–3.8
2. 3-day trial — no way to tell if a campaign is expensive
- Problem
- A user launches the bot and gets a free 3-day subscription. Payment doesn't come right away — yesterday we spent $500 and saw 20 payments, while most users were still on trial.
- Solution
- We calculated expected CAC: spend divided by payments plus 10% of active trials. This let us make decisions on a campaign within a day instead of a week.
Decision in 1 dayWas 7 days
3. Scaling winning targets
- Problem
- We needed to find the best competitors and scale them, not spread the budget across the entire market.
- Solution
- Winning targets were grouped into combined campaigns where we tested new creatives. The best results came from exactly these groups of proven competitors.
Competitor #2 — $1.28 per paymentGroups — 985 payments at $5.18
- 7,128 bot launches — best campaign
- €2,454 spend on a single campaign
