In the world of traffic arbitrage, there’s always room for experimentation and new strategies. In this case, we’re sharing our setup: we decided to test the VPN vertical using popunder traffic in the Brazilian market. This decision was based on insights gathered from spy services, where we noticed that the BR GEO is seeing strong activity and delivering solid results.
And for our most dedicated readers, we’ve got a special bonus from HilltopAds at the end — just in case you’re eager to apply your newfound knowledge right away!
Key Points
Offer: VPN
GEO: BR (Brasil)
Traffic: Non-Mainstream High and Medium Activity; Mainstream High and Medium Activity
Ad Format: Popunder mobile
Ad campaign period: 20 November – 30 November
Revenue: $2,930.4
ROI: 166.4%
VPN Market Growth and Traffic Arbitrage Prospects in 2025
You’re probably already well-versed in VPN offers and don’t need much explanation about what they are. However, we’ve put together a quick overview and assessed the prospects of the VPN market for 2025.
A VPN (Virtual Private Network) is a technology that allows users to create a secure internet connection over a public network, as if they were connecting to a private network. VPNs hide the user’s real IP address, ensuring online anonymity, encrypting data, enhancing security, and enabling users to bypass geographical restrictions, providing access to content that may be unavailable in certain countries.
When it comes to VPN offers, these are advertising propositions related to VPN services, promoted through various ad formats (e.g., popunder, banners, native ads). The goal of these campaigns is to attract subscribers or paying users to VPN services, maximizing monetization based on the traffic generated. Typically, VPN offers operate on a CPA (cost-per-action) model, where advertisers earn for each VPN service download or subscription.
VPN Market Volume and Vertical Prospects in 2025:
Rising Interest
In recent years, there has been significant growth in the popularity of VPN services. This is largely driven by the increasing online security threats, the rise in cyberattacks, users’ desire for anonymity, and the ability to bypass geographical restrictions (such as access to streaming services or social networks).
Prospects for 2025
The VPN market is expected to continue its growth, driven by an increase in mobile users and heightened focus on data protection. It’s predicted that by 2025, the global VPN market could reach $37 billion, with an annual growth rate of around 15-20%. This opens up excellent opportunities for traffic arbitrage professionals, as more users are seeking ways to protect their online activity.
Competition and Opportunities
By 2025, the VPN vertical will remain competitive, but thanks to rising demand and expanding markets (such as in developing countries and Asian regions), traffic arbitrage specialists will find new opportunities. The key will be the ability to identify and effectively monetize less saturated geographic regions, such as South America, Eastern Europe, or Asia.
Research forecasts that by 2027, the VPN market will be valued at 92 billion dollars.
Choosing the Right GEO: Key Regions for VPN Offers
When it comes to VPN offers, selecting the right GEO can be a critical factor for the success of an ad campaign. Let’s take a look at three key regions — North America, Asia, and Latin America — and analyze their potential for promoting VPN offers:
North America: A High-Stakes Market
The USA, Canada, and Mexico are considered the top GEOs for VPN offers. These regions feature high user engagement, making them highly attractive for traffic arbitrage. While demand is substantial, so is competition, which means entering these markets with a strong offer is essential for success.
Asia: A Region with Growing Potential
Asian countries like Indonesia, Japan, the Philippines, Hong Kong, and South Korea are markets with relatively low competition but rapidly increasing demand. This presents a significant opportunity for launching successful VPN ad campaigns, as the region shows promising growth and potential.
Europe and Latin America: Markets with Unique Dynamics
The UK and Venezuela stand out due to strict local internet policies, while CIS countries show a high demand for VPNs due to content restrictions and censorship. These unique conditions offer opportunities to target specific user needs and adapt campaigns accordingly.
In our case, we chose Brazil, an unconventional GEO for VPN offers. People are actively seeking ways to safeguard their data and avoid online threats, which presents excellent opportunities for traffic arbitrage professionals promoting VPN offers. In these markets, it’s essential to emphasize the importance of personal data protection and create ad campaigns that address the urgent security concerns of users.
While it’s known that Brazilians speak a variant of English, many aren’t aware that the local population has limited proficiency in the language. Therefore, everything—from creatives to landing pages and apps—needs to be translated into Brazilian Portuguese to ensure the message is clear and accessible.
As of now, 77% of the Brazilian population has internet access, with mobile devices being the primary means of connecting to the internet. The number of mobile devices regularly used online exceeds the total population. Mobile internet speed averages 22 Mbps. Statistically, Brazilians spend about 5 hours per day online, largely driven by the widespread use of streaming services such as video, music, and podcasts. Additionally, 78% of smartphones are used for gaming. This indicates that mobile traffic and in-app advertising in gaming apps are key areas of focus.
Given the high mobile traffic and growing interest in online security, developing markets like Brazil are becoming increasingly attractive for traffic arbitrage professionals. The key to success lies in the proper adaptation of content and strategy, which we will dive into in the following section.
Advertising Campaign Launch Strategies
For a successful advertising campaign, a strategic approach is essential—relying on luck alone is not enough. Let’s break down how to effectively launch an advertising campaign in Brazil, based on GEO analysis insights.
The first key factor is the visuals. Brazilians are highly patriotic and take pride in their country, so creatives that incorporate national colors, symbols, and emblems are likely to resonate well. Another important aspect is aligning your creatives with national holidays, such as Carnival (February 25 to March 5), Catholic Easter, the Rock in Rio music festival (September 2 to 11), and Brazil’s local version of Halloween (November 1-2). Additionally, personalized messages that address location, interests, or cultural traits will help foster trust and increase engagement.
In terms of content, Brazilians, like many people in developing countries, are responsive to gifts, discounts, and special offers. Mentioning these perks in your creatives significantly boosts the likelihood of conversion.
For example, consider our VPN offer. Clicking the call-to-action button redirects users to the App Store, where they can download the application at no cost. This simple and convenient user experience drives installations and increases conversions.
Another advantage is the low competition in Brazil’s online market. This makes the GEO appealing for both seasoned traffic arbitrage professionals and newcomers, as there are ample opportunities for success with less intense competition.
Now, let’s focus on the Popunder Mobile ad format. This is one of the most effective formats for mobile traffic, allowing ads to open in a new window behind the main content. It works particularly well in regions with high mobile engagement, like Brazil, where users frequently interact with mobile content. Popunder ads are a subtle yet highly effective way to grab attention without interfering with the user experience, ensuring that the ad is noticed while the primary content remains intact.
Considering all these factors, Brazil stands out as an excellent GEO for promoting VPN offers and beyond, especially when leveraging the Popunder ad format. With the right content adaptation, eye-catching creatives, and a strategic targeting approach, you can ensure your advertising campaign’s success.
General settings for an advertising campaign on the HilltopAds platform
Before launching an advertising campaign on HilltopAds ad network, you need to register as an advertiser. You can register using this link.
To create an advertising campaign, follow these steps:
- In the Traffic Channels section, choose Non-Mainstream High and Medium Activity; Mainstream High and Medium Activity
- Go to the Manage Campaigns section
- Click the Add Campaign button
- In the campaign creation section, select the Popunder mobile ad format
Next, it’s essential to set up the Postback to track the results of your ad campaign.
For a detailed description of working with Postback and the available placeholders, check out our guide.
In simple terms, for the final URL of your offer, you’ll need to insert parameters to pass conversions and source IDs. The parameter for conversions is
click_id, and the source ID iszone_id.
The resulting Final Destination URL should look like this:
https://my_offer.net/?&click_id={{ctoken}}&s1={{zoneid}}
- {{ctoken}} – HilltopAds parameter for passing conversions.
- {{zoneid}} – HilltopAds parameter for passing source ID.
You can also add any other parameters available for further campaign analysis, but remember to include the click_id parameter in the final link to track conversions.
Next, set up the necessary targeting settings:
- GEO – BR (Brazil)
- OS – iOS
- OS Version – 14, 15, 16, 17, 18
- Device – mobile and tablet
- Language – Portuguese
You can also configure campaign filters and allow/disallow Proxy and WebView traffic from the campaign. In our case, for the VPN offer, we have disabled all filters:
- Proxy – disallow
- WebView – allow
You can set both daily and total budget limits, but keep in mind the daily limit shouldn’t fall below $20. During testing, we used a daily budget of $100 for the campaign.
The final step before launching your VPN campaigns is to set the cost per thousand impressions (CPM). Pay attention to the Traffic Volumes graph in the top-left corner, which shows premium, minimum, and recommended CPM rates.
We set a CPM bid of $1.0 to ensure accurate and consistent performance data, helping us measure the effectiveness of our single campaign.
Advice from HilltopAds:
To test a new offer, start with the recommended CPM. This will show whether the offer is effective and whether the campaign needs optimization.
Optimization and Tracker
We implemented the automatic optimization tool from day one of the campaign, configuring the analysis parameters to a 24 hour period, with a threshold of 1,500 impressions and fewer than 1 conversion. This strategy enabled us to cut costs on underperforming ad sources and reallocate the budget to more promising audience segments. Additionally, to track conversions effectively, we set up a postback tracker through Voluume, ensuring accurate data transfer for optimization.
The statistics from the 11-day advertising campaign can be seen in the screenshot from the Voluum tracker. This provides a clear overview of the campaign’s performance, including key metrics and conversions achieved during the testing period.
To learn more about the capabilities of automatic optimization with HilltopAds, you can check out the article on the website:
Auto Optimization is a tool for automatically adding non-performing traffic sources. Thanks to this feature, the HilltopAds system removes non-profit sources from your advertising campaign and adds them to the BlackList.
Results
After carefully tuning the advertising campaign for 11 days, we achieved the following results:
- Total Costs (Spent) – $1,100
- Total Earnings (Profit) – $2,930.4
- ROI (Return on Investment) – 166.4%
ROI is one of the key indicators in digital marketing that allows you to assess the profitability of an advertising campaign. In simple terms, ROI shows you the percentage of advertising investments that you have managed to recover through earnings from the ads.
The formula for calculating ROI is:
ROI = (total earnings – total cost) / total cost * 100%
In this case, the return on investment is 166.4%
Key Takeaways and Recommendations
Launching a VPN ad campaign in Brazil proved that even unconventional GEOs can deliver stellar results if approached strategically. With a 166.4% ROI, this case study showcases how localized content, the right ad formats, and smart optimization can turn a modest budget into a significant profit.
Lessons Learned
- Localization is a Game-Changer: Translating creatives and landing pages into Brazilian Portuguese and integrating cultural elements (like national symbols) fostered trust and boosted engagement. Brazilians appreciate when brands speak their language—literally and figuratively.
- Popunder Ads Shine for Mobile Traffic: Brazil’s mobile-first internet culture made the popunder ad format the perfect choice. It grabbed attention without being intrusive, ensuring high visibility.
- Optimize, Optimize, Optimize: Using tools like HilltopAds’ Auto Optimization helped cut out low-performing traffic sources, reallocating the budget to where it truly mattered.
- Low Competition, Big Opportunities: Brazil’s relatively untapped market offers plenty of room for both seasoned pros and beginners in traffic arbitrage.
Recommendations for Future Campaigns
- Test Beyond the Usual GEOs: Brazil is a fantastic market, but don’t stop there. Explore regions like Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Philippines) or other parts of Latin America (Venezuela, Argentina) with growing demand and less saturation.
- Leverage Local Culture: Tailor your creatives to local holidays, traditions, and preferences. For Brazil, think Carnival vibes, football themes, and a splash of national pride. Personalization = conversions.
- Prioritize Mobile: Make sure your offers and landing pages are mobile-optimized. In emerging markets, mobile traffic rules the game, and slow-loading pages are deal-breakers.
- Use Data to Your Advantage: Implement advanced tracking tools like Voluum to monitor conversions. Data-driven decisions will save you money and help scale winning campaigns faster.
- Start with Smart Budgets: Begin with the recommended CPM rates and scale up only after analyzing performance.
- Offer Real Value: Brazilians love deals, freebies, and anything that screams “special offer.” Highlight benefits like enhanced privacy, discounted plans, or free trials to encourage action.
- Ride the VPN Growth Wave: With the global VPN market projected to hit $37 billion by 2025, staying ahead of trends is crucial. Keep an eye on developing technologies and new consumer needs.
The VPN niche isn’t just growing—it’s thriving. With the right mindset and tools, there’s no limit to how far you can scale. So, what’s your next GEO going to be?
