Term · metrics
Fake Followers (subscriber inflation)
Subscribers that are bots, dormant accounts, or bought in bulk to inflate a channel's headline size without contributing real reach. They make a channel look more valuable to advertisers than it is. Telegram exposes no native bot-follower metric to non-admins, so detection relies on open signals: a low view rate relative to subscribers, erratic or near-zero engagement, sudden subscriber jumps between snapshots (a classic bulk-purchase pattern), and a young channel that is already very large. No single signal is conclusive — these are probabilistic indicators, not proof — which is why tgadsspy reports an audience-quality estimate rather than a precise "bot percentage".
Related terms
- Audience QualityA composite judgement of how real and engaged a channel's audience is — the question an advertiser asks before buying a placement.
- View Rate (views-to-subscribers)The ratio of a channel's average post views to its subscriber count, expressed as a percentage. A 50,000-subscriber channel averag
- Engagement Rate (ER)The share of a channel’s audience that interacts with a post — typically views divided by subscriber count. Channels with high ER
- Reach (estimate)The estimated number of unique viewers a creative is likely to have. In a public channel, reach is commonly approximated by the ch
See it in the data
Cite this entry
Telegram Ads Spy (2026). "Fake Followers (subscriber inflation)" in Telegram Ads glossary. https://tgadsspy.com/info/fake-followers
Licensed CC-BY-4.0 — reuse allowed including commercial, attribution required.