MENA growth notes
for subscription apps
Concept pieces, practitioner playbooks, and technical breakdowns from the team building Madar AI.
Madar AI is here: a MENA-native mobile growth platform
We've shipped Madar AI — the first AI Growth Operating System built for MENA subscription apps. Here's what it does, why we built it, and what's next.
Why MENA mobile growth needed its own platform
Six years of running MENA growth on tools built for the US taught me what breaks. Here's the shortlist — and why we built Madar AI.
The MENA founder's guide to App Store Connect: subscription analytics deep dive
What Active Subscribers, Subscribers, Paid Subscribers and Recoverable Cancellations actually mean — plus the MENA-specific signals to watch and the reporting bugs to know about.
How to read your AppsFlyer LTV vs predicted LTV gap in MENA
AppsFlyer's predicted LTV model is calibrated against a global behavioural baseline. In MENA the ATT opt-in is below that baseline and SKAN coverage is patchier, which makes the predicted-vs-actual gap behave differently than the docs suggest. When to trust pLTV, when to override with cohort-based modelling, and how to do it.
Why your cohort retention dashboard is lying to you in Ramadan
Cohort retention curves assume calendar-day-uniform behaviour. Ramadan breaks that assumption — a March cohort and an April cohort acquired through the same channel look like different products. How to detect Ramadan-distorted cohorts and what to do about them.
The MENA founder's guide to Iyzico vs Stripe vs Apple/Google IAP for subscription apps
When to use each payment rail in Turkey, KSA, UAE, and Egypt: decline rates by country, refund flow differences, Iyzico's 3DS quirks, IAP's platform tax, and where Tabby and Tamara fit as supplementary BNPL rails. Honest trade-offs, no vendor hype.
The 7 cultural events that shape MENA mobile app revenue (with concrete examples)
Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, Eid al-Adha, Saudi National Day, UAE National Day, White Friday, Hijri New Year — when each falls, the behavioural shift expected, and the ad-spend recommendation that comes out of it.
Why your churn rate is actually 3 different numbers (and how to use each one)
Customer churn vs revenue churn vs involuntary churn — the three metrics most founders conflate, when to use which, the MENA-specific patterns that make them diverge, and how to model each one in your forecast.
Building a subscription app in MENA? Here are the 5 metrics your AppsFlyer dashboard hides
VPN attribution loss, iOS ATT decline, TikTok MENA gaps, Snapchat KSA attribution holes, and ISP-level S2S postback failures — five things the dashboard quietly doesn't tell you, and what to look at instead.
Why your Arabic ad creatives perform 30% worse than your English ones — and how to fix it
Font choice, RTL composition, cultural symbols, modesty conventions, and color palette — five reasons your Arabic creatives underperform and what good Arabic ad treatments actually look like.
The MENA subscription app pricing playbook — $9.99 doesn't work in Egypt
Purchasing power parity, payment rails, country-specific tier strategy, trial length variation, and refund expectations — what global pricing gets wrong about MENA and what to ship instead.
What is the AI Growth OS for MENA mobile apps?
A working definition of the AI Growth Operating System, why MENA mobile subscription apps need one, and what it actually does day to day.
How Ramadan changes subscription app engagement: 6 patterns we have seen
Six concrete shifts in mobile subscription behaviour during Ramadan, with the cohort signals that predict them and what to actually do in product, retention, and paid acquisition.
The AppsFlyer attribution gap in MENA: why 80% of your installs are invisible
A technical breakdown of why MMP attribution under-reports MENA installs, the four mechanisms behind the gap, and the reconciliation approach that recovers the missing volume.