Most early-stage apps hesitate to invest in paid user acquisition (UA). The fear is always the same: “What if we burn money and get nothing back?”
Golden Surveys started in exactly that position: no history, no benchmarks, no creatives, no tracking. Within a few months, they were running campaigns across multiple markets with a reliable ROI model. Here’s how we built a UA engine from zero.
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When we first started, nothing was in place:
As Tuğçe from REPLUG’s Paid UA team explained:
“The hardest part was deciding where to invest. With no baseline, you’re testing dozens of countries without knowing which will stick. Some markets even had legal or advertising restrictions. It took two to three months of testing before we found the star countries and channels.”
We built the UA stack from the ground up: tracking, attribution, event mapping, and segmentation. Without this, scaling would have been guesswork.
We launched campaigns across 30+ countries to collect data. After months of testing, markets like Brazil, Korea, and Saudi Arabia emerged as strong performers.
“We knew not every market would work, but patience paid off. Korea, for example, kept performing well even during summer when we expected a drop.”
Wondering if your app is ready for paid UA? Book a call with REPLUG’s team to get your roadmap.
To connect with real users, we localized creatives in 10+ languages and designed payout visuals in local currencies. We rolled out more than 50 variations: banners, UGC, AI avatars.
Channel learnings stood out:
“I didn’t expect banners to beat UGC on Google. On TikTok, it was the opposite. UGCs and even AI avatars were the clear winners.”
Instead of chasing installs, we scaled only when ROI signals were strong enough. We compared Day-1 ROI benchmarks to projected Day-30 outcomes.
“If Tier-2 markets reached 30% ROI on Day-1, we knew they would cross 100% by Day-30. That gave us the confidence to scale.”
Read our success stories to understand our 360-degree approach to app growth better.
From a zero baseline, Golden Surveys built a profitable UA program across multiple regions. Early ROI signals turned into long-term growth, with each platform adding value:
And most importantly:
“The client trusted the process and now has a long-term UA roadmap. What started as hesitation turned into confidence in sustainable growth.”
At least one to two months. Anything shorter doesn’t give enough data for reliable ROI benchmarks.
You don’t need huge budgets, but you do need enough for statistical relevance. On iOS, SKAN requires a higher volume than Android.
That it’s “too expensive” to even try, with structured testing and localized creatives, it can be profitable.
Many app teams delay paid UA because of fear.
This case proves that you can build a scalable, ROI-positive program from scratch; if you trust the process, test systematically, and scale with discipline.
👉 Wondering if your app is ready for paid UA? Let REPLUG’s team guide your roadmap.