Choosing your role
Every account chooses a role, whatever its plan: the choice is the same on Free as on Ultimate.
Every Onflow Ads account has one role: Advertiser or Channel owner. The role decides which dashboards, menus and actions you get in Paid Promotions, Pulse, Onflow Verified and the Brand Safety Shield. Cross-Promotion, the Subscriber Exchange and Syndicate are the same for everyone.
You choose the role once, and it is final for every flow. Read this page before you choose.
The two steps
You sign in the way you always do: email and password, Google, Apple or Telegram. The first time you open the Telegram dashboard there are two steps:
- Step 1: connect the bot. Link your Telegram account to the Onflow Ads bot (Connecting Telegram and adding your email).
- Step 2: choose your role. Advertiser or Channel owner.
If your bot is already connected, you go straight to step 2. If you have neither, step 1 comes first: you cannot choose a role before the bot is connected. Until you have chosen, every page of the Telegram dashboard brings you back to step 2, and you return to the page you were heading for once you have confirmed.
An account that existed before roles were introduced and has no role yet is asked the same question at its next visit to the Telegram dashboard. An account that had already picked a side of Paid Promotions keeps it: that side is now its role, for every flow.
Free plan · a new account with the bot connected, choosing its role (step 2) The two cards say what each role can do and show an example of that role's dashboard menu. The box below them lists the flows both roles share. Confirm my role stays disabled until you pick a card and tick the box.
What each role can do
| Advertiser | Channel owner | |
|---|---|---|
| Paid Promotions | Book posts in other people's channels, follow your orders, bid in auctions | List your channels, set prices, accept and run bookings, get paid |
| Pulse | Run polls in other channels, Test before you buy, Brand Lift studies, reports, and pick the channels yourself in the catalogue | Opt your channels in to host polls, set fees, topics and limits, answer offers, see earnings and payout dates, and poll your own audience |
| Onflow Verified | Buy audit reports on channels before you book | See your channels' scores, what pulls them down, and appeal |
| Brand Safety Shield | Brand Safety profiles, scans before you book, live watch on running ads | See each channel's brand-safe status and what was flagged, and why |
What both roles share
Cross-Promotion, the Subscriber Exchange and Syndicate work channel to channel. They have the same dashboard whichever role you choose, and your role never limits them. An advertiser who also runs a channel can still cross-promote it, swap subscribers and license posts.
How to choose
- Read both cards. Pick Advertiser or Channel owner.
- Tick I understand my role is final and can't be changed.
- Press Confirm my role.
Your dashboard opens. Nothing is set until you confirm: closing the page, or picking a card without confirming, changes nothing. Pressing Confirm my role twice, or again after a lost connection, is safe: the same choice is simply confirmed again.
Your role is irreversible and final for every flow. You cannot change it, and our support team cannot change it for you on request. Terms of Service, section 3.2, sets this out.
Where your role shows
Your role shows in the top bar of every dashboard page on a computer, beside your reliability score and your wallet. On a phone, where the bar has no room for it, it is at the top of the menu.
Lite plan · an Advertiser: the role in the header The Advertiser badge sits at the start of the top bar. The sidebar puts the role's tools under Your tools and the flows both roles use under Shared flows.
Elite plan · a Channel owner: the role in the header The badge reads Channel owner, and each tool's card describes the owner's side: selling sponsored posts, hosting polls.
Elite plan · a Channel owner — the role in the menu on a phone 1 Your role: Channel owner, under the plan badge.
The Telegram bot follows the role too. When you send /start, its welcome names your role, says what the bot does for you (an advertiser's campaigns, reports and payment alerts; an owner's posts, offers and payouts) and has an Open your dashboard button. Before you have a role, the bot shows its general welcome.
Anything you already had on the other side
Choosing a role never cancels anything. If your account already had something running on the other side, for example a Paid Promotions order you booked before you chose Channel owner, or a channel you had listed before you chose Advertiser:
- it finishes normally, under the rules it started with: payouts are paid, refunds are made, disputes are decided;
- it stays visible, read-only, on the page where it always was, with a note saying why you cannot start anything new there;
- you cannot start anything new on that side.
The same applies after a correction by our team (below).
When something says it belongs to the other role
Pages and buttons for the other role are not shown to you. Where a page holds items from before you chose, it shows them read-only with one line explaining why. If you reach an action for the other role, it is refused with a message that says so:
| Message | What it means |
|---|---|
| "This is a Channel owner account, so it can't start advertiser actions. Anything you already had running on the advertiser side finishes normally." | You tried to start something only advertisers can start, such as a Pulse poll in other channels, a Brand Lift study, an audit or a Brand Safety scan. |
| "This is an Advertiser account, so it can't start channel-owner actions. Anything you already had running on the owner side finishes normally." | You tried to start something only channel owners can start, such as listing a channel or hosting polls. |
| "Choose your role first: open your Telegram dashboard and pick Advertiser or Channel owner. It takes a minute." | Your account has no role yet. Open the Telegram dashboard and complete step 2. |
Messages on the role page
| Message | What to do |
|---|---|
| "Connect the Telegram bot first (step 1), then choose your role." | Step 1 is not done. Press Step 1 at the top of the page and connect the bot. |
| "Tick the box to confirm you understand the role is final, then confirm." | Tick I understand my role is final and can't be changed., then press Confirm my role again. |
| "Choose Advertiser or Channel owner." | Pick one of the two cards before you confirm. |
| "Please verify your email first." | Verify your email address (Verifying your email), then come back. |
| "Your role is already Advertiser, and it is final." (or "Channel owner") | Your role was already set, perhaps in another tab. Reload the page; your dashboard opens. |
| "Too many attempts. Please try again in an hour." | The page limits how often a role can be submitted. Wait an hour, then try again. Nothing was set by the attempts. |
If your role is wrong
Our team corrects a role only to fix a clear mistake, at our discretion, and never while anything of yours on the current side is still in progress: an order, a bid, a listing, a poll you are hosting or running, a study, an audit or a scan. Those must finish first. A correction is recorded with its reason, and you can ask us for that record. A change of mind is not a mistake: we do not switch roles because you would now prefer the other side.
To ask, contact support with your account's OFA ID and what went wrong. Support explains whether a correction is possible; nobody can promise one.
If you genuinely need both sides, for example you run channels and also advertise a separate business, the Terms allow you to hold one further account for the other role, with a different email address and a different Telegram account. The two accounts must never deal with, review or act for each other (Terms of Service, sections 3.2 and 16.4).