Head of User Acquisition at NAGA (Fintech, Forex, CFD, Stocks, Crypto, BNPL, Prop)

If you're in fintech, you know that acquiring high-quality customers is tougher than ever. Regulation changes, rising ad costs, and saturated markets make it difficult to scale profitably. But these challenges are exactly what keeps me hooked. 

Over the past 8 years, I’ve worked with big fintech players, including NAGA Group, Zilch (a unicorn) and others, where I: 

▪️ Managed $3M+ ad budgets per month across multiple channels.
▪️ Ran campaigns in 120+ countries, adapting to different regulations and compliance restrictions.
▪️ Built 3 user acquisition teams from scratch, including one at Zilch, where the marketing team alone had 150+ people.

In addition to that, I’ve consulted or helped launch and optimize paid ads channels for 200+ companies across 6 sectors - fintech, forex, crypto, SaaS, B2B services, and eCommerce.

But beyond the numbers, what really matters to me are results and impact. Seeing a campaign take off, improving traffic quality, generating more (and better) leads - that’s what keeps me going.

If you're looking for strategic guidance on paid acquisition, need help troubleshooting performance issues, or want an expert to audit and refine your campaigns, let’s connect here or through an email – stanislav@galandzovsky.pro

Heading to Dubai for iFX EXPO 2026 ✈️

February 10–12 at the World Trade Centre. Looking forward to connecting with colleagues and industry peers from brokers, prop firms, and fintech companies across the region.

MENA continues to be one of the most dynamic markets in our space, but what makes it particularly interesting is just how localized the approach needs to be. What works in the UAE doesn't automatically translate to Egypt or Saudi Arabia. Payment methods, messaging, trust signals, and even channel performance vary significantly across the region.

At the expo, I'm looking forward to discussions around:

→ User acquisition strategies that scale across emerging vs. mature markets
→ How prop firms are adapting their positioning and offers for different audiences
→ What's stopped working in paid traffic (and what's replacing it)

If you'll be there, let's connect and maybe have a quick coffee. Drop me a message and if you have a booth, share the number so I can stop by.

See you in Dubai 👋

Stanislav Galandzovskyi

Acquisition & Growth Expert in Fintech (Forex, Prop Firms, Crypto, SaaS, B2B Services) • Managed $3M+ monthly ad spend & ran paid ads in 120 countries

My podcast episode with Dealers Connect is live 🎙️

One topic we discussed was about 90% promo codes and how they're quietly killing prop firms.

When prop firms launch, they're competing against established players with brand recognition and customer bases. The easy solution is to go aggressive with discounts – 70%, 80%, even 90% off first challenges.

The strategy appears to work initially. But around month 3 or 4, the pattern becomes clear: these customers aren't evaluating which firm offers the best product. They're hunting for the next discount code, moving from one 90% deal to another. 

Once you anchor your brand this way, there's no path back – you've trained an audience that will never accept normal pricing. The result is zero repeat purchases, weak lifetime value, and a brand identity built entirely around being the cheapest option.

Before launching extreme discount strategies, take a hard look at your retention metrics and LTV calculations. The customers who only buy on deep discounts rarely develop loyalty to your platform. 

We covered this – and much more – in the full episode, including: regional market breakdowns, regulation impact and even 5 practical tips for new prop firms & brokers.

Big thanks to Roman Garanin and Ievgen Iugrinov for the thoughtful conversation and great questions.

One broker registered over 600 domains just to protect their brand from typosquatters.
Sounds like an extreme measure, but definitely an effective one.

I recently shared insights for a Finance Magnates article about the industrial scale of typosquatting in the financial sector – a problem many brokers still underestimate.

When someone bids on your brand, your real site may not even appear on the first screen of search results. Scammers hijack not only organic traffic – they steal your paid traffic, diverting advertising budgets into fraudulent funnels.

The biggest mistake is reacting only after an incident has already happened. Monitoring brand mentions and cloned pages needs to be continuous. Search monitoring platforms often reveal impersonation attempts before domains even go live.

But it's just one of the things you can do to protect your brand. You can find out more in the full article (link in the comments).

70% of landing page traffic comes from mobile devices, but most prop firms still don't optimize loading speed and mobile versions. The result is clear: traders leave before they even see the offer.

Together with Maryna Volokhova, we broke down the key mistakes that cause prop firms to lose paid traffic on their landing pages – from technical issues to trust and positioning problems.

More insights in the full article → link in the comments.

Big thanks to Maryna for the collaboration and to Financial Tech Times for publishing the piece.

Prop firms can break even in 6 months in the US, but in just 1 month in India. The difference in starting budgets and ROAS between markets is massive.

I recently contributed insights to a Finance Magnates article by Arnab Shome, breaking down user acquisition economics for prop firms across different regions:

→ US – a mature market with high competition. Starting monthly budget $5,000–$10,000+, break-even in 3–6 months, average ROAS up to 3x (for established brands – up to 4x)

→ Latin America – one of the most efficient regions globally. Break-even in 1–2 months, monthly budget $1,000–$2,000 per country. Brazil shows ROAS up to 10x at peak

→ South Asia (India, Pakistan, Bangladesh) – break-even often happens immediately or within the first month. Working ROAS 2–4x, peak can reach 12x

→ Europe – positive ROAS in 2–4 months, faster in lower-competition markets. UK requires 3–6 months due to high competition and regulatory constraints

Big markets bring volume, but emerging markets often show better unit economics.

Full article with regional breakdown, budgets, and ROAS → link in the comments.

Classic Forex-only prop firms are still growing – but the market's getting crowded. Right now, we're seeing a clear trend: more and more firms are moving beyond "pure Forex" and adding Crypto and Futures to their offering.

This is a strategic shift to a model where companies stop competing only with each other – and start capturing three audiences simultaneously: traditional Forex traders, the crypto community, and futures traders.

As a result, we get three revenue streams, three channels, and a much more resilient business model. Yet, there's a high risk of making a big mistake: trying to push all three markets equally in every region. Success actually depends on three factors:

A) Market Infrastructure & Habit
It's about where the attention ecosystem already exists.
Where FX is historically strong (UK, MENA), there's already a content flywheel: education, influencers, habits. Where futures culture dominates (USA) – that positioning sounds more legitimate. Where crypto went mainstream (LatAm, Asia) – attention is cheaper, but trust is more volatile.
In practice, you're competing for attention that's already formed around specific instruments in each region.

B) Ad Policies
Prop firms operate in an unregulated space, but advertising platforms still treat your offering differently based on what you're promoting and where.
As a consequence, you can have the exact same prop firm model but spend $50 per client in one geo and $200 in another – simply due to how platforms categorize your challenge (trading education vs financial service) and local policy enforcement.
Example: In the US, "futures evaluation program" often faces less platform friction than "forex prop challenge" due to market perception and how platforms interpret these offerings.

C) Payments, Trust & Local Friction
Different regions run on different payment rails: LatAm needs Pix/Boleto, India needs UPI, and Africa needs mobile money. International cards carry higher chargeback rates in some geos. And in certain countries, the term "prop firm" itself has become toxic due to scam history – forcing you to completely redesign creative and funnels (not "prop firm challenge" but "funded trader evaluation").

Companies that get this are lowering CAC and increasing LTV because they stop fighting regional context. Instead, they use it as leverage.

If you found this helpful, let me know, and we'll talk about which specific prop firm type performs in concrete regions.

OpenAI is to introduce advertising to ChatGPT. 
In short: 

The company plans to introduce ads on the free version and a new lower-cost plan called ChatGPT Go. Ads will be clearly separated from ChatGPT’s answers and shown outside the core responses. OpenAI states that ads will not influence how the model responds and that conversations will not be sold to advertisers.

They're just starting testing for logged-in adults in the U.S. I'm really curious to see their ad platform and how advanced the settings will be. And for our niche, what kind of rules will exist.

Overall, this is good news since it will give us a new traffic source that will most likely be quite personalized.

What's your opinion?

taplio

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