MVAS in SE Asia & Europe — 6 months of data and what surprised me

[Kike]

Body:

Hey AF community,

Been running MVAS campaigns since late 2024 across Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, Poland, and Turkey. Figured I’d share some actual data points and observations — maybe it’ll help someone, maybe someone can correct my assumptions.

The numbers (averaged over 6 months):

GEO	Primary Traffic	Avg CR	EPC	Notes
TH	Offerwall + WAP	12.4%	$0.84	AIS performs 40% better than DTAC
MY	Mixed (DSP + In-App)	8.7%	$0.71	e-wallet users convert poorly on carrier billing
ID	Push + Offerwall	6.2%	$0.58	Quality dropped significantly in Q1 2026
PL	In-App only	4.1%	$0.92	Higher payout but harder to scale
TR	DSP + Social	5.8%	$0.79	Turkcell dominates, others are meh

What I got wrong initially:

• Assumed iOS would perform similarly to Android in carrier billing. Nope. Android CR is 3-4x higher across all GEOs.
• Thought push traffic in ID was “dead” based on forum chatter. It’s not dead, just requires much stricter source filtering.
• Expected PL to behave like Western Europe. It doesn’t. Users are more skeptical and need more touchpoints.

What’s working now:

1. Carrier-level targeting over GEO-level — the difference between operators in the same country is massive
2. Offerwall in casual gaming apps — consistently 2-3x better CR than interstitials
3. Daily budget caps on new sources — learned this the hard way after a “promising” source burned $800 in 6 hours

The actual question:

I’m hitting a wall on scaling beyond $3K/day without quality dropping. For those of you running similar volumes in these GEOs — are you:

• Splitting across more sources with lower daily caps?
• Focusing on fewer, higher-quality sources?
• Something else entirely?

Genuinely curious about different approaches here. Not looking to copy anyone’s exact setup, just trying to understand the trade-offs others are making.

Also — if anyone’s been testing newer DSPs in SE Asia (outside the usual Leadbolt/Tapjoy/Appodeal lineup), would love to hear what’s worth exploring.

Drop thoughts below. Always up for a real conversation about this stuff.

Cheers