Where should we test Retention?

You've likely heard that the Philippines is the go-to for inexpensive retention testing.

Why Philippines?

Philippines, for years, has been uniquely positioned as very low-CPI highly predictive of US retention (but NOT monetization), having a large English-Speaking audience.

Cheaper options (India, Nigeria) exist, but aren't predictive of T1 retention.

Better retention options (Germany, Finland) exist too, but at higher CPI.

Philippines, Vietnam, and Thailand usually offer the best bang for the buck.

NOTE: We have occasionally seen that Philippines (or other low-CPI non-Western Geos) can sometimes, for certain games, fail as a proxy for US retention.

Sometimes this happens for predictable (eg cultural or thematic) reasons. Other times, inexplicably.

If you will be iterating over multiple releases, it may be worth anchoring PHL retention, once, with a US-based parallel test, to establish the relative baseline.