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Which countries to target with app ads — high-RPD bundles and cheap-but-paying geos

Country choices for subscription-app ads in 2025–26 — Samet Durgun's single Meta ad set covering high revenue-per-download countries with the language set to English, Adapty's case for testing cheaper geos (South Africa, Brazil, Romania, Poland) on Apple Ads, and the App Store storefront vs IP-country mismatch.

Updated 2026-10-24·4 sources·user-acquisitiongeo-targetingmeta-adsapple-adsinternational

Which countries to target with app ads

TL;DR

  • Samet Durgun’s Meta setup (Dec 2025): one ad set targeting all high-RPD (revenue per download) countries at once, with the ad-set language set to English.12
  • The bundle: US, Canada, UK, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, plus wealthy European countries (Italy, Spain, Scandinavia…), optionally Hong Kong, Korea and Japan.2
  • Adapty on Apple Ads (June 2026): stop defaulting to tier-1. Pick 2–3 countries you’ve never tested that have high conversion and low CPA, and run a small test.3
  • Adapty’s 2026 benchmark (subscription apps, 59 niches, 90+ countries): Apple Ads CPA is under $1.50 in 92% of countries, and 18 of the top 20 markets by conversion rate also have low CPA. A US tap costs ~14× one in Algeria.456
  • Lower LTV is fine if CPA falls more. If LTV is 5× lower but users are 10× cheaper, you profit. Mykola Martynovets likes South Africa (English-speaking, good payers, cheap). Brazil, Romania and Poland have lower LTV but much lower CPA.7
  • On Apple Ads, “US” means the App Store storefront, not the user’s location. In Thomas Petit’s accounts up to ~30% of “US” installs came from other countries.8

Details

Why the English-language bundle works. Samet used to run US only. He then saw some countries respond unusually well to certain apps, possibly because fewer advertisers compete there. The English setting reaches English-speaking phone users across rich markets and skips everyone who uses their phone in another language.12 One trade-off he names: expats who don’t use their phone in English are excluded.2

The overlooked quadrant. Most teams concentrate on the five or six tier-1 countries where CPA runs $3–10. Adapty’s chart of cost per tap vs conversion highlights the low-cost, high-conversion quadrant that most teams ignore; Mykola names Uzbekistan, Brazil, Colombia, Turkey, Poland and Romania as never-tested markets worth a try. Per-country niche data is in Apple Ads benchmarks by niche — where search intent is cheap and converts.569

Samet Durgun’s Meta tiering at scale (Sep 2026). For 100K+/month Meta spenders he keeps about four campaigns: US, tier-1 English (EU/Scandinavia, Australia, Canada…), tier-1 other languages with one ad set per language group (German-, French-, Arabic-speaking, Japanese…), and tier 2 split the same way, each ad set still hitting ~10 events/day. He sees Turkish teams lean too hard on the US and German teams stay too long in Germany (What subscription apps spending $100K+/month on Meta have in common).1011

Use cheap geos for learning, then for profit. Adapty’s three “this week” actions start with geo: open the dashboard, see where budget goes, and test a never-tried country from its benchmark (the report was gated to webinar attendees when recorded).3

A pricing bug surfaced by geo comparison. One Adapty customer bid on the same keyword in the US and Canada and got ~200 installs in each. The US produced 0 trials, Canada ~20 (10%). The US price was too high. After the Canadian pricing was applied in the US, the trial rate stabilised. Install-level dashboards would never have shown this.12

Storefront mismatch. Apple Ads targets the storefront a user configured. MMPs geolocate by IP. Many users in Saudi Arabia, Iraq and Nigeria use the US store, so you pay US prices for installs that monetise differently. Check what share of “US” installs is really US.8

Disagreements / caveats

  • Yuliya Lennox and others test creatives in cheap, similar-converting geos at ~$10/day (Creative volume and hit rate — why you need dozens of ads per winner). Samet’s bundle is an evergreen rich-country set, not a testing geo.
  • Adapty’s country benchmarks weren’t public at recording; the South Africa / Brazil / Poland claims are one team’s view.
  • Samet: “it could change when we have another call”. Geo tactics age fast.13

See also

Footnotes

  1. LTV mastery: Getting high-value subscribers from Meta @ 13:48 — Samet Durgun ↩ ↩2

  2. LTV mastery: Getting high-value subscribers from Meta @ 14:51 — Samet Durgun ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4

  3. Turn Apple Ads into a revenue channel @ 44:44 — Adil Bilgi ↩ ↩2

  4. Turn Apple Ads into a revenue channel @ 15:06 — Mykola Martynovets ↩

  5. Turn Apple Ads into a revenue channel @ 15:55 — Mykola Martynovets ↩ ↩2

  6. Turn Apple Ads into a revenue channel @ 16:42 — Mykola Martynovets ↩ ↩2

  7. Turn Apple Ads into a revenue channel @ 51:03 — Mykola Martynovets ↩

  8. Hard truth about Apple Search Ads | Thomas Petit | ASO Conference 2023 @ 30:21 — Thomas Petit ↩ ↩2

  9. Turn Apple Ads into a revenue channel @ 17:28 — Adil Bilgi ↩

  10. Scaling Subscription Apps Past $100K MRR: Advanced UA Tactics for Subscription Apps @ 25:03 — Samet Durgun ↩

  11. Scaling Subscription Apps Past $100K MRR: Advanced UA Tactics for Subscription Apps @ 28:16 — Samet Durgun ↩

  12. Turn Apple Ads into a revenue channel @ 37:06 — Mykola Martynovets ↩

  13. LTV mastery: Getting high-value subscribers from Meta @ 15:45 — Samet Durgun ↩