Traffic from YouTube Shorts and Telegram Stories: is it worth entering new formats in the summer of 2025?

Summer 2025 is not just a vacation season. It is also a hot time for those who work with traffic. While some are looking for ways to reduce CPL on TikTok, others are looking at new formats that have already started to show results: YouTube Shorts and Telegram Stories.

At first glance, both tools look like just an addition to the content. But in fact, these are platforms with huge organic potential, which are not overheated yet and allow you to enter with minimal budgets.

In this article, we will analyze how traffic from YouTube Shorts and Telegram Stories works, what arbitrageurs do with it, and whether it is worth joining this race in the summer of 2025. Everything is to the point, without water and from the point of view of practice.

Why are new traffic sources emerging?

Traffic arbitrage in 2025 is a game of survival. Bans, moderation, competition, rising cost per click. TikTok Ads has almost doubled in price compared to 2023, and Facebook Ads has long required either genius or magic to pass moderation.

That’s why more and more arbitrageurs, marketers, and even businesses are starting to look for alternative ways to drive traffic, and YouTube Shorts with Telegram Stories are proving to be the right time in the right place.

🔹 YouTube Shorts is more than a TikTok clone

YouTube Shorts started as Google’s answer to TikTok, but quickly became an independent ecosystem with billions of views and its own audience. In 2025, Shorts are actively moving towards monetization and partnerships with brands, which makes this format especially interesting for arbitrage specialists.

What does YouTube Shorts offer:

What you can promote:

What to consider:

👉 Tip: don’t forget about SEO inside Shorts – title, description, and hashtags for keywords like “how to make money in 2025”, “the best app for finance”, “where to invest $100”.

🔹 Telegram Stories is an unexpected traffic booster

Telegram has evolved a lot over the past two years. At first, Stories seemed to be just another “trend for the sake of trend”, but in the summer of 2025, they became a separate advertising tool. And they work especially well in the CIS and on local traffic.

Why it works:

• Views come from the core – subscribers who are already interested in the channel.
  
• Links are clickable, which is convenient for CPAs and arbitrage funnels.
  
• Personality works – even a fake “expert” in the sidebar is trustworthy.
  

What arbitrageurs use:

• First-person narratives
  
• Promo with bonuses and coupons (“only for my subscribers”)
  
• Calls to “private message” or “follow the link in the description”
  

Offers that come in:

• Education: courses, guides, training
  
• Finance: microloans, banks, investments
  
• Local subscriptions and services (VPN, IPTV, AI platforms)
  
• CPA offers with payment for registration or action
  

👉 Tip: shares work better when warmed up. Place a few posts in the feed before a series of stories so that it doesn’t look like a direct spam.

🔹 Which format to choose?

YouTube Shorts – if you are:

• Work with burst offers or the global market
  
• You know how to edit video and keep the viewer’s attention
  
• Want to collect traffic to Telegram, bots, mini-landing
  

Telegram Stories – if you are:

• Promote offers in the CIS
  
• You have or can rent a channel with the target audience
  
• You want a “native” event with trust and a soft offer

And the best thing is to test both. One can act as the main source of traffic, the other – as a retarget or additional engagement.

🔹 Cost of entry and result

🔹 Common mistakes of beginners

1. Expecting a quick ROI – these formats require warming up.
   
2. Lack of funnel – you can’t just paste a link and wait.
   
3. Poor quality creative – especially in Shorts, the video will not work without holding it down.
   
4. Lack of tracking – nullifies analytics. Be sure to install a tracker (Keitaro, RedTrack).
   
5. Suitable offer for the format – the story “brother, look at my course on binary options” is unlikely to give results.
   

🔹 Tools that will come in handy

• CapCut / VN / InShot – for editing Shorts
  
• Keitaro, Binom – for traffic tracking
  
• FlexCard– for paying for advertising
  
• TGStat / Telemetr – analytics of Telegram channels
  
• ChatGPT / Midjourney – text generation and previews
  

💡 Conclusion

In the summer of 2025 YouTube Shorts and Telegram Stories are not just “cool features”, but real working traffic channels. Before they become overheated and spammed with ads, it’s time to get in, test, look for connections, and scale.

The future belongs to those who know how to adapt. And these formats require flexibility, creativity, and courage.

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