Booking a Promo Slot
The booking composer is where you write your ad, schedule it, and add the placement to your cart. You reach it from a channel page — either the "Book a post →" button in the header or a specific row in Formats and rates (which pre-selects that format).
The page walks a three-step progress bar: 1 · Schedule → 2 · Creative → 3 · Add to cart. An "Escrow-protected" badge in the header is a reminder that nothing is charged until checkout, and the charge goes into escrow, not to the owner.
Step 1 — Schedule
- Pick a day from the row of day chips (about a week of upcoming dates).
- Pick a time from the time chips: 09:00, 12:00, 15:00, 18:00 or 21:00.
Times are shown in your local time — the owner sees the same moment in theirs. Bookings must start at least 48 hours from now, so chips inside that lead window are disabled.
If you later check out with a start time that falls inside the short-notice window, a rush premium (a percentage shown at checkout) is added — see Cart and checkout.
Step 2 — Creative
Write your ad post in the text area ("Write your ad post — a hook, the offer, and your link."). A live counter shows your length against Telegram's 1,024-character caption limit.
Live Telegram preview
The right-hand panel renders your post exactly as it will look in Telegram — the channel's name and avatar, your text, attached media, the expected view count and your chosen time, and a pin note describing the format ("📌 pinned 1h · stays 24h in feed"). If your post contains a link, the preview shows the tracked-link card ("onflow.link · tracked — clicks measured first-party, deduped, no IP stored").
Photos and video
Below the text area are media slots:
- Photos — click a "+ photo" slot to upload an image (JPG, PNG, WebP or GIF). The number of photo slots depends on your plan (from 2 on entry plans up to 8 on the top plans). Click the ✕ on a thumbnail to remove it.
- Video — on plans that include video creatives (Elite and above), a "+ video" slot accepts MP4, MOV or WebM clips. On lower plans the slot is shown locked with the plan it unlocks on. A video takes the whole creative — Telegram can't mix a video with photos in one ad.
Your caption and media are saved together as a reusable ad post (creative) on your account. The cart books this exact saved post, and the same saved posts are what you attach to auction bids and bundle bookings.
AI assistance (optional)
A set of AI helpers sits in the composer. All are metered per day; when you've used your daily AI actions the buttons tell you so.
- 🤖 Draft — type a plain-language brief ("Describe your ad and let AI draft it…") and click Draft. The suggestion fills the text area for you to review and edit.
- 🎨 Generate image — AI-paints an ad photo straight into your next free media slot (a top-tier feature; the button explains if your plan doesn't include it). Nothing is charged for a failed generation.
- 🤖 Fix to pass — appears only when the pre-flight has hard failures; rewrites your current post to clear exactly those issues, for your review.
- 🤖 AI compliance check — an opt-in advisory read of your post against this channel's own stated rules. It flags subtle-conflict risk the keyword checks can't catch. It never blocks your booking — it only advises.
Pre-flight checks
Under the media slots, a checklist updates as you type:
| Check | Behaviour |
|---|---|
| Length | ✓ when your post fits the caption limit; a warning when it's over |
| Link | ✓ "Link found — it will be wrapped with first-party click tracking"; a soft warning if there's no link yet |
| Disclosure | ✓ when #ad (or similar) is present; otherwise a warning with a one-tap "+ add #ad" chip |
| Channel rules | Hard failures fetched from the server: this channel's links policy and its prohibited topics (which you can't see directly — this check is how you avoid booking blind and getting declined) |
Soft warnings don't stop you. Hard failures (red ✕ rows) block "Add to cart" until fixed — every avoidable decline costs you time, so the composer refuses to let you book a post the owner is bound to reject.
Step 3 — Add to cart
The Price panel shows the format and slot you chose, the owner's unit price, any owner discount applied automatically (a Spotlight deal price on this format, or the owner's perk discount for you), a "Platform service fee — included" line, and the total.
Click "Add to cart". The composer:
- saves your creative (caption plus any media) as your campaign's ad post,
- adds one cart line for this channel and format (re-adding the same channel and format replaces the line rather than duplicating it),
- carries your schedule and creative along to checkout,
- and morphs the button into "Added ✓ · Review cart →".
You can keep browsing and add more channels — the same creative and schedule apply to the whole cart, so one checkout runs one campaign across every channel in it.
A cart books one ad post across all its channels. If you need different copy for different channels, book them in separate checkouts.
Next: Cart and checkout — review your placements, apply discounts, and pay into escrow.