Refusing an ad
Sometimes an ad lands in your channel that you would rather not carry. It might be inside the content level you chose and still be wrong for your audience — a competitor, a tone you dislike, a topic your subscribers will not thank you for.
You can refuse it. It comes down immediately, it never comes back, and it costs you nothing.
Deleting the bot's post yourself, or removing the bot's administrator rights while a placement is live, is treated as breaking the exchange's 24-hour promise. It costs 1.5 points of reliability, earns a strike and a 6-hour cooldown, and at three strikes suspends every channel on your account for 7 days. The count does decay, but slowly — it takes a full 30-day cycle after your cooldown ends, with no further removal, to get back to zero. Refusing through the dashboard does exactly what you want and carries no penalty at all. Always use Refuse.
Before you start
- The channel must be one of yours and still enrolled — a withdrawn channel has no Hosted ads button.
- The channel must have carried at least one ad. The Hosted ads button only appears once something has been placed there.
- The ad must be one your channel was actually asked to host. You cannot refuse an arbitrary campaign id.
When to use it
| You want to | Use |
|---|---|
| Remove one specific ad that is live in your channel now | Refuse — this page |
| Stop that ad ever appearing in this channel again | Refuse — this page |
| Approve every ad before it posts, from now on | Review ads: On — see Reviewing ads before they post |
| Stop hosting in this channel entirely | Leave — see Hosting ads |
| Change what content levels this channel accepts | Re-run Add a channel for the same channel — see Getting started |
Step by step
- On the exchange page, open My channels.
- Press Hosted ads on the channel's row.
- A panel opens listing the ads this channel has carried in the last 30 days, one row per campaign, live ones first and then most recent. With nothing to show it reads "No ads hosted here in the last 30 days."
- Find the ad. Each row shows a Live pill if a copy is up now, a Refused pill if you have already refused it, a meta line reading "Level 3 · Crypto & Web3 · OFSE-…", and a preview of the ad's text up to 158 characters.
- Press Refuse on the row you want gone. A refused row has no Refuse button.
- Confirm: "Refuse this ad? It won't be placed in your channel again, and any live copy comes down now — penalty-free."
- The exchange replies "Refused OFSE-…. It won't be placed in this channel again — the live copy is coming down now." The trailing clause appears only when a live copy was actually taken down; otherwise the reply ends after "again." The row flips to Refused.
What happens after you refuse
Three things happen at once, and all of them are permanent for that ad in that channel:
- Any live copy comes down. The placement is marked due now with a sanctioned-refusal reason, and the bot's retention loop removes it on its next pass — within about a minute, without waiting for the rest of its 24 hours.
- Any scheduled copy is cancelled. If that ad was queued to appear in your channel later, it is dropped rather than posted.
- A permanent block is recorded. That ad is never matched to that channel again — not in this cycle, not in any future one.
And three things that do not happen:
- No reliability penalty. The bot reads the refusal marker as sanctioned and closes the placement without recording a breach — so there is nothing for the website to rule on, and no strike for anyone.
- No strike, no cooldown, no suspension. Your standing is untouched.
- No exposure. The advertiser is never told a host refused them. Their record simply shows the placement removed.
The one cost is neutral rather than punitive: a placement that did not run its full term earns no credits, and neither side gets the clean-run reliability bump. You are not paid for an ad you did not carry.
Scope — exactly how far a refusal reaches
| Scope | Refused? |
|---|---|
| That ad, in that channel | Blocked permanently |
| That ad, in your other enrolled channels | Not blocked — refuse it there too if you want it gone |
| That advertiser's other campaigns, in that channel | Not blocked — they can still be matched |
| The whole topic or content level | Not blocked — to change what you accept, change the channel's level |
Refusal is deliberately narrow. It removes one creative from one channel, so a single unwanted ad never costs you the rest of the pool.
Refusing your swap partner's ad records the permanent block, so it can never be placed in that channel again — but it does not pull the live copy down early. A swap is a two-party commitment that the bot removes as one unit, and cutting one half short would leave your own ad running in your partner's channel with nothing in return. If you need a swap stopped, cancel the swap campaign instead; both halves still finish their 24 hours. See Swaps.
If you find yourself refusing a lot
Frequent refusals usually mean the channel's settings do not match your instincts. Two better tools:
- Lower the level ceiling. If you keep refusing finance or crypto ads, the channel is enrolled at a level that accepts them. Re-run Add a channel for the same channel and pick a lower level — re-enrolling updates the ceiling and keeps everything else.
- Turn on review. Approve each ad before it posts instead of refusing after the fact. See Reviewing ads before they post.
If something goes wrong
| What you see | What it means | What to do |
|---|---|---|
| "That ad isn't one your channel has hosted." | The campaign has no placement in this channel | Refuse it from the channel that actually carried it |
| "Channel not found." | The channel was withdrawn, or the page is stale | Reload the exchange page |
| "Could not load hosted ads." | A transient read failure | Press Hosted ads again |
| The reply ends at "again." with no takedown clause | Nothing was live to take down — the ad had already finished, or it is a swap placement | Expected. The permanent block is still recorded |
| The post is still visible a minute later | The bot removes on a 60-second loop, and Telegram can be slow | Give it a few minutes. Do not delete it yourself |
Frequently asked
Does refusing hurt my reliability score?
No. Not at all. This is the entire reason the Refuse button exists — so there is always a penalty-free way to get an ad out of your channel.
Will the advertiser know it was me?
No. Both sides of the exchange are anonymous, and a refusal does not break that.
The ad is already down but I do not want it back. Should I still refuse it?
Yes. Refusing a completed ad blocks it from returning to that channel in a later cycle. Refusing the same ad twice is safe and does nothing extra.
I refused an ad and my channel has gone quiet. Are they related?
No. A refusal blocks one creative and nothing else. A quiet channel is a matching question — see the "Why your channel might be quiet" table in Hosting ads.
I removed the ad myself before I knew about Refuse. What now?
You will see a strike and a cooldown on the exchange page with the exact end time. Paid plans forgive a number of genuine accidents per cycle, and the hub tells you how many are left. Read Rules and fair play, and use Refuse from now on.
Appeal my exchange ad because … files the appeal with your reason from the chat, after CONFIRM. What the assistant can do for you has the full list and the confirmation rule.
Related
- Reviewing ads before they post — stop unwanted ads before they appear rather than after.
- Hosting ads — the protections that decide what can reach your channel at all.
- Rules and fair play — what an early removal actually costs, and the legitimate exits.
- Running ads — with a channel hosting, the advertising side is open.