What the Branding Programme pays that the standard one does not

Türkiye's IT export incentives come in two sizes. Most companies claim under the Standard Programme, which anyone eligible can use with no revenue threshold. Companies past $1.5 million a year in earnings from customers abroad can apply for the Branding Programme, whose IT track is called E-TURQUALITY. Getting in takes an application, a paid review and a five-year plan for the brand.

This post is about what changes on the money side once you are in. Every figure below is the cap on support paid rather than on what you spend, set in Turkish lira, at roughly 47.7 TRY to the dollar. The rate stays at 50% in both programmes, and at 70% for activity aimed at the Ministry's target countries.

The three caps that matter most to a studio

In dollars, the annual advertising cap goes from about $1.05 million of support to about $2.1 million, which covers roughly $4.2 million of user acquisition spend a year at the 50% rate, or $3 million at 70%. Store commissions go from about $419,000 to about $838,000 of support.

The per-product line is the one that decides most cases. A studio with a single hit spends heavily on that one title, and the Standard Programme stops paying at 15,000,000 TL of support on it while the annual cap sits mostly unused. On E-TURQUALITY that same title carries 25,000,000 TL, about $524,000. The Marka track sits in between at 20,000,000 TL per product and a 75,000,000 TL annual figure.

Doubling the product count from 10 to 20 matters to a different kind of company: a hyper-casual publisher running a wide portfolio, or a SaaS company with several separately marketed products.

Five items that stop having caps

Under Article 33 of the Decision, a group of items in the Branding Programme carry no fixed annual cap of their own. They count only against the overall programme ceiling, which is 500,000,000 TL a year for E-TURQUALITY and 250,000,000 TL for Marka.

• Overseas offices, including rent, shared office membership, and the fit-out: interior design, signage, audio-visual and security systems and their installation
• Brand-level advertising, promotion and marketing
• Trademark and patent registration abroad, where filing the application is enough and you do not wait for the registration to complete
• Trade fair and event participation, at home and abroad, including promotion at the event itself
• Testing software, apps and games for customers abroad

Compare that with the Standard Programme, where overseas office rent is capped at 6,000,000 TL a year per unit, brand advertising at 25,000,000 TL, trademark registration at 2,500,000 TL and each trade fair at 1,500,000 TL. A studio taking a large stand at three shows a year and opening a sales office in London runs into those numbers. On E-TURQUALITY it does not.

Staff support doubles as well: up to 10 people instead of 5, at up to 90,000 TL per person per month in Türkiye and 250,000 TL per person per month in an overseas office.

Two items that only exist here

Some support has no equivalent in the Standard Programme at all.

Strategic and IT consultancy, under Article 67 of the circular, covers 40,000,000 TL a year of support, about $838,000. It reaches further than the name suggests: as well as target-market and corporate development advice, it covers licences for software you buy or rent, database and operating system costs with their annual maintenance and updates, and the consultancy, training and outsourcing involved in rolling that software out and keeping it running. An ERP or CRM programme that a growing studio would otherwise pay for outright is half funded. Approval has to be asked for before you pay, which is unusual in this programme and easy to get wrong.

Value-added IT projects, under Article 78, support contractor agreements with companies, institutions or public bodies abroad, up to 4,000,000 TL per project and two projects per target market. It covers software bought or rented for the project, certification, accreditation, testing and analysis, consultancy on complying with the law of the country the project runs in, and travel and accommodation for up to two people on installation and maintenance trips. This is aimed squarely at B2B software companies delivering into overseas clients, and it carries the 70% rate in target countries.

A worked example

Take a studio with one live game and one in soft launch, spending in a year:

• $2,800,000 on user acquisition for the live game
• $400,000 on user acquisition for the soft-launch title
• $1,100,000 in App Store and Google Play commissions, almost all of it on the live game
• $200,000 on hosting
• $200,000 on two trade fair stands, $100,000 each

Under the Standard Programme, the live game's advertising claim stops at 15,000,000 TL, about $314,000, even though half the spend is $1,400,000. The soft-launch title is well under its own cap and claims the full $200,000. Commissions are worth $550,000 at 50%, but the per-product ceiling is 4,000,000 TL, so the live game brings back about $84,000. Hosting claims $100,000. Each fair is capped at 1,500,000 TL, about $31,000, so the two together return about $63,000.

Under E-TURQUALITY the same year looks different. The live game's advertising claim rises to 25,000,000 TL, about $524,000. Its commissions rise to 8,000,000 TL, about $168,000. Hosting still returns $100,000, comfortably inside the higher cap. The fairs have no per-event cap at all, so they return the full $100,000.

The same spending, in the same year, goes from about $761,000 to about $1,092,000 of cash back. That difference repeats every year the company stays in, which is the arithmetic the entry process is buying.

Two rules that shape the calendar

Support is paid only after the Ministry approves your Strategic Business Plan. Everything you spend while in the programme counts from admission, so the spending does not need to wait, but the cash does.

The annual ceiling is then tracked by calendar year, using the date on the payment document rather than the date you file. Once a year's ceiling is fully committed, further applications for that year are set aside, and you refile them in the following calendar year if the six-month window on the payment is still open. At Branding Programme volumes, the order you file claims in across a year becomes part of the routine.

Whether this applies to you yet

Below $1.5 million a year in earnings from customers abroad, the Standard Programme is the whole answer, and it is a good one: store commissions, hosting and advertising at 50% or 70% add up to real money with no application to pass.

Above that line the numbers on this page are worth an afternoon of your time. Run your own year through the calculator at the standard caps first, because if your spending is already pressing against them, applying is worth costing out this year.