Target countries: how game studios get 70% instead of 50% on user acquisition

Every support item under Decision No. 10962 pays 50% of eligible spend as a base. A handful of items pay more, and for a game studio they happen to be the ones where the money is: advertising, promotion, offices and events aimed at the Ministry's target countries are supported at up to 70%.

Where the rule comes from

Article 44 of the Decision allows the Ministry to raise the support rate on specific items by up to 20 points when the activity is carried out in, or aimed at, countries the Ministry designates. The implementing circular (Article 102) applies the full 20 points and lists the items:

• Overseas office rent (and, in Branding, fit-out)
• Brand advertising, promotion and marketing
• Digital product promotion, meaning per-title advertising for software, apps and games
• Overseas trade fair and event participation, and delegations
• Tech Export Accelerator projects and International Technology Marketing Offices run by industry bodies
• Value-added IT projects under the Branding Programme

The country list itself is annex EK-53 to the circular. For the IT sector it currently names 20 countries:

United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Spain, Singapore, United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, India, Malaysia, South Africa, Russia, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, Pakistan and Syria.

We maintain a page for each of them with the items that qualify.

What it means in numbers

Take a mobile studio spending 1,000,000 USD a year on user acquisition. Under the digital product promotion item (Article 17), that spend is reimbursed at 50%, so 500,000 USD comes back. If the campaigns target the US, UK, Germany, Japan and Korea, the same spend is reimbursed at 70%: 700,000 USD. The difference is 200,000 USD a year for reporting the same campaigns with country targeting visible.

The per-product cap (15 million TL a year per title) and the annual item cap (50 million TL) apply to the support amount, so the higher rate also uses up the cap faster. For most studios that is a good problem, and it is exactly what the Branding Programme's higher caps are for.

The multi-country rule

Article 102(2) of the circular is the one detail to plan around: if an activity covers several countries, the boosted rate applies only if all of them are on the list. A campaign that targets the US and Brazil together is a 50% campaign, because Brazil is not on the IT-sector list.

The fix is operational rather than legal. Split ad sets by geography so that target-country traffic runs, and is invoiced or reported, separately from the rest. Meta, Google and TikTok all report spend by country, and the ad-platform report showing the targeting is one of the documents that goes into the claim.

Three ways studios leave the 20 points on the table

1. Global campaigns with mixed geos. As above: split them.
2. Reporting without country detail. If the report shows total spend only, the reviewer cannot see that the countries qualify. Export the country breakdown every month.
3. Not claiming the boost on offices and events. A Berlin office, a stand at Gamescom, or a Tokyo Game Show trip all sit in the 70% tier. Studios often only think of ads.

Where this leaves you

For a studio whose audience is in the West and East Asia, the target-country rate turns the programme from generous into remarkable: 70 cents back on every dollar of qualifying UA. The calculator has a one-click toggle for the target-country rate so you can see the difference on your own numbers.