I'm curious about how Telegram will decide what ads to show, how heavily it will try and personalize them; will the ads be relevant to the channel you are in or follow you around Telegram.
FWIW, personally, I like the idea of a choice of ads or paid subscription best.
Won't work. The vast majority people don't pay for messaging service, and without people, there's no messaging app. Ads are the only way forward.
Will they offer an optional ad-free subscription? Maybe, but I wouldn't count on that, and it's likely to be higher than $1/month.
> So, the day I get ads in Telegram I'm leaving
Nobody cares.
I have stimulated many people to switch to Telegram because it is the best and all you have is to try it, realize that and motivate your friends to switch with you. Obviously many of these people will go with me once I find a better alternative. The situation probably is the same for many other people.
People will go only if there's another service that's good enough and has enough user density. You may find the best privacy-oriented, ad-free messaging app, but if it's empty or if it's hard to use, it's essentially useless.
By this point, it's hard to compete with the behemoths like WhatsApp or Telegram and people will not care about this nearly as much as you do. So, no, it's not 'obvious' at all.
Most of the people I know have less than 10 contacts they actually care about and communicate regularly and it is not hard to convince the most of them to install an app you would sincerely recommend.
If a new app ever manages to become big (as in, Telegram-level big, let alone WhatsApp), it would take years of raising money and marketing. And how would they pay for that exactly? You think people pay a mensual/anual fee for a messaging apps when there are free alternatives? No, the answer is, again, ads. That or selling user data, which is much worse.
You're too focused on the tech, but you have no understanding of how business works.
So looks like ads is the only other option left for now.