Community advertising means paying to reach a private room – a group chat, server or newsletter – through a placement its owner approves. The market splits by surface: email has mature networks, Telegram has catalogs, and group chats went unserved until recently. Here's the whole landscape.
Yes, we're on this list and yes, we built this page – so the table sticks to checkable facts: surfaces covered, pricing model, and who approves the placement.
| Platform | Surfaces | Pricing model | Who approves | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Torchly | WhatsApp · Telegram · Discord · Slack | Per confirmed conversion (you set the CAC, spend is capped) or flat placement | Every post approved by the community's admin | Brands that want outcomes, not impressions – incl. regulated verticals needing an audit trail; from ~$500 |
| Telega.io | Telegram only | Flat fee per post (catalog of 7,000+ verified channels); managed packages $700–3,500 | Channel owners accept listings | Testing Telegram channels cheaply at volume; crypto-heavy demand side |
| Magfi | Telegram · Discord | Enterprise, sales-led – no public pricing | Programmatic placement | Big-brand budgets wanting managed Telegram/Discord reach |
| Paved | Newsletters (email) | CPM / flat sponsorships via marketplace | Publishers accept sponsorships | Email-first audiences; mature marketplace with per-newsletter data |
| beehiiv Ad Network | Newsletters on beehiiv | Managed matching, CPM-based | Publishers opt in | Scale email reach across beehiiv's creator base |
| Whop | Discord-centric paid communities | Membership rails (owners charge members), not brand ads | n/a – it's a monetization storefront | Community owners selling access; not a brand-side ad channel |
Notable absences: WhatsApp marketing SaaS (AiSensy, Wati) sells Business-API broadcast and chatbots, not placements inside organic groups – different product entirely. Swapstack, an early newsletter marketplace, was acquired by beehiiv in 2023 and shut down.
If you know what a customer is worth, per-conversion pricing turns the channel into arithmetic: name your CAC, cap the volume, pay for confirmed results. Only Torchly prices this way – everyone else sells impressions or posts.
For awareness spend, newsletter CPMs (Paved, beehiiv) and Telegram catalogs (Telega.io) are the mature options – transparent volume, weaker connection to conversions.
Where the purchase is high-stakes – money movement, B2B tools, anything regulated – the approval gate matters more than reach. Trade press has documented brands from Samsung to Netflix paying Discord server owners directly for exactly this reason; a marketplace adds the pricing, rails and attribution those one-off deals lack.
See which room types fit your product in the community directory, or how the per-conversion model works on the pricing page.
Paying to reach the members of a private community – a WhatsApp group, Telegram channel, Discord server, Slack workspace or newsletter – through a placement its owner approves and publishes, rather than buying impressions on a public feed. The owner's endorsement is the format.
Influencer marketing buys a person's public reach; community advertising buys access to a private, pre-segmented room through its gatekeeper. Rooms are smaller but far denser: every member opted into the community's topic, and the recommendation arrives in a space with no competing ads.
As of 2026, Torchly is the only marketplace placing brands inside WhatsApp groups with admin approval. Telegram-focused marketplaces (Telega.io, Magfi) don't touch WhatsApp because Meta sells no group inventory - placements only exist where an admin personally posts them.
Newsletter networks price per impression ($15-50 CPM is typical). Telegram marketplaces sell flat-fee posts from roughly $10 to thousands per channel. Torchly prices per confirmed conversion against a brand-set target CAC, with placement floors of $40-400 per community and a hard spend ceiling.
Telegram catalogs let you test from tens of dollars per post. Torchly campaigns start around $500. Newsletter networks typically want four figures. Enterprise-focused platforms like Magfi are sales-led with no self-serve pricing at all.