>2x
ROAS US Market
>1.5x
ROAS UK Market (First month live)
55.7%
Install-to-Trial (US)
65%
Trial-to-Paid (UK, month one)
100%
KPI Compliance
The Client
PureVPN is a globally operating VPN provider available in 65+ countries. It serves three distinct groups of iOS users: people who want encrypted browsing and IP protection on networks they don’t control, streamers who want access to geo-restricted content libraries that vary by country, and gamers who want lower latency and access to titles that release in other regions before their own.
In 2026, PureVPN came to Advalor looking for more than standard user acquisition. The US iOS market was their main growth focus, and they needed a partner who could go beyond conventional UA approaches, hold strong quality thresholds on every cohort, and eventually prove the model in a second market.
The Brief
Two hard KPIs governed every campaign from day one, tied directly to payment:
Invoicing is tied directly to the volume that achieves those targets. That structure keeps everyone focused on users who actually subscribe, not users who install and disappear.
The LEAP Model
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Q1 2026: Three Cycles
Positive ROAS + New Audiences
New segments opened, creative angles stress-tested
Learn - Engineer - Active - Perform
New Channels, New Signals
Additional channels entered the mix, audience signals evaluted
Learn - Engineer - Active - Perform
Budget Reweighted by D30 Data
Weighting adjusted cycle by cycle on feedback loops
Learn - Engineer - Active - Perform
Q1 ran three full LEAP cycles on the US campaign.
Both hard KPIs were met every month. Install-to-Trial and Trial-to-Paid held above their thresholds across January, February, and March without exception. January delivered a positive ROAS while the team simultaneously opened new audience segments and stress-tested creative angles. The following months were deliberately test-heavy: new channels entered the mix, new audience signals were evaluated, and budget weighting was adjusted cycle by cycle based on the D30 feedback loops building up.
By the end of March, three LEAP cycles had produced a detailed picture of what converted, what did not, and where the real upside was sitting.
The US Campaign Delivers
The fourth LEAP cycle on the US campaign delivered the sharpest results of the year.
Install-to-Trial reached 55.7% against a hard KPI of 20%. Trial-to-Paid came in at 43% against a threshold of 25%. ROAS exceeded 2x.
Against January’s already-positive baseline, cost per acquisition had dropped by 33% and ROAS had improved significantly.
Those numbers do not come from a fortunate month. They come from three cycles of deliberate work, with a functioning baseline and growing D30 signal underneath every experiment.
The UK Expansion
Off the back of Q1, PureVPN trusted Advalor with a new challenge:
the UK market.
The team did not treat it as a copy-paste of the US setup. The UK has different pricing sensitivity, a different competitive environment, and different user behavior. But the LEAP model was built to adapt rather than restart. The vertical knowledge, audience intelligence, and creative learnings from the US gave the UK launch a real head start that a cold-start campaign simply would not have.
The UK campaign posted a Trial-to-Paid rate of 65% in its first month, against a hard KPI of 25%. ROAS came in at more than 1.5x.
A greater than 1.5x ROAS in month one of a new geographic launch, with Trial-to-Paid running at more than double the required threshold, is the direct output of a team that had already spent a quarter doing the unglamorous work of learning what converts a VPN user into a paying subscriber.
The Bigger Picture
Most UA conversations focus on results. Fewer focus on the process that makes results repeatable across campaigns, across models, and across markets.
The PureVPN engagement shows that the learning phase has a real return on investment, even when the ROAS numbers during it look unspectacular. Three months of disciplined LEAP cycles set up what April delivered. The UK result showed that what works in one market can transfer when the process behind it transfers too.
By The Numbers
What This Means for Your App
Subscription app UA is not a faucet you turn on. It is a system you build. The PureVPN engagement shows what happens when you give that system proper time, proper structure, and real accountability. Three LEAP cycles built the intelligence behind April’s performance. A second market launched with confidence rather than guesswork. Hard KPIs held every single month because the process behind them was designed to, not hoped to.
If your app has a trial-to-paid model and you are tired of partners who optimize for installs while your subscription numbers tell a different story, that is exactly the conversation Advalor is built for.
