The geo everyone ignored paid my rent for six months
The setup. Mainstream dating offer. Everyone in my circle ran US/UK/CA. I ran those too — and lost the bid war daily. Illustrative numbers.
The move. Out of frustration I tested 8 "boring" mid-tier geos nobody talked about: Portugal, Greece, Czechia, a few others. Small populations, low competition.
The numbers. US ran 0.95 ROI — too crowded, CPMs bid into the ground. The unglamorous geos averaged 1.7 because almost nobody competed for that inventory. Combined they only spent $200/day (small populations cap volume) but at 1.7 that's clean profit with near-zero competition stress. Six months, roughly $18k profit from geos my peers literally never mentioned.
The lesson. Competition is a cost. Everyone crowding the same tier-1 geos bids the margin out of them. The profit often hides in geos too small to interest the big players — uncrowded, cheaper inventory, sane CPMs.
What I'd do differently. Nothing on the strategy — but I'd have tested the long tail of geos from day one instead of bleeding into the tier-1 bid war first. The lesson generalizes: when everyone zigs to the obvious, the unsexy slice is where the margin lives.
Arb Files
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