Traffic & Channels
GEO Tiers
The shorthand for grouping countries by player value and competition: Tier 1 (US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany) pays and costs the most, Tier 2 trades some player value for volume, Tier 3 is cheap mass traffic.
GEO tiers group countries by how much a player is worth and how hard that player is to buy. Tier 1 covers markets such as the US, UK, Canada, Australia and Germany: high deposits and spend per player, the most expensive auctions and the strictest regulation. Tier 2, for example Turkey, Brazil, Romania or Slovakia, gives up some player value for volume and lighter competition. Tier 3, for example India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Nigeria, Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan, is cheap, large and price-sensitive.
The tiers are a starting map, not a rule. The same offer can pay Tier 1 money in a Tier 2 country, and licensing often decides more than the tier does: in a regulated Tier 1 market an unlicensed brand simply cannot run. Buyers compare GEOs on cost per depositor against the payout rather than on CPM, because a cheap click that brings a tiny first deposit can be worse business than an expensive one.
Bidding in Tier 3 is where teams most often copy the wrong habits. Auctions are cheap there, so the limit is deposit size and fraud rather than traffic cost: work the bid down from the payout, give each creative more volume before judging it, and check deposit quality before scaling, not after.
In buyer speech
“Keep the Tier 1 test on Canada only; the Tier 3 bundle goes to KZ and UZ, where the CPA still covers the small deposits.”