The FAS dropped its bomb on the advertising market on the evening of March 5, just before the main gender holiday of the year. It became interesting how the amount of advertising in Telegram changed due to the new developments.

I have already seen some studies claiming that the amount of advertising decreased by 15%, and the poll in the channel showed alarming results.

What I did: I collected mentions of "erid" in the tgstat search and compared March 1-8 of 2025 and 2026. No decline is visible yet. Or it is too difficult to discern at "such a distance."

On March 8, 32.8 thousand posts with erid in the text were published. Is that a lot or a little? In 2026, there were only two days with fewer posts — January 1 (29.1k) and January 11 (28.1k). For example, February 14 had 41.6k, February 23 had 43.6k.

On March 8, indeed very few ads were published. But maybe it's because it's a day off and everyone is resting? To check this, I compared 2025 and 2026:

In 2025, on March 8, 27.2k posts were published. This is less than on weekdays, but more than on any other weekend/holiday at the beginning of the year. For example, January 1 had 21.7k posts.

Comparing March 7 and 8 and talking about a decline, as some do, is also incorrect. Last year, the drop from March 8 to March 7 was 21.4%, this year it is 21.8%. The figures are within the margin of error, which is normal.


That is, it's a typical weekend decline that cannot be attributed to the FAS news.

But if we look not at days but at channel sizes, the picture changes.

Let's compare the difference in the number of mentions between March 1-5 and March 6-8 (before and after the news):

Before the FAS bomb, large channels with 100k+ audience had the same number of placements as last year. After the news, the decline year-on-year was 55%.

That is, large channels and large brands slowed down, while everyone else continued as planned.