Most forex campaigns are bought and reported on leads, and most of those leads never fund anything. This is what the numbers look like when the target moves from the lead to the deposit — including figures from an account that produced 3,958 of them.
A forex lead is a name, a phone number, an email and sometimes a country. That is a contact record. It costs you again when the sales desk calls it, and again when the person turns out to have had no intention of funding anything.
Yet almost every forex campaign is bought, optimised and reported on exactly that. Cost per lead falls month on month, the dashboard looks healthier every week, and the deposit count sits still.
Cheap leads are easy. Leads that fund an account are a completely different campaign.
Different audiences, different creative, different pre-lander, and a smaller number that is worth far more. Once the target moves to the deposit, almost every decision upstream changes with it.
This is the comparison almost nobody publishes, and it decides your entire acquisition model before a single advert runs.
Licensed costs more to acquire and deposits far larger. Offshore is cheaper at the top of the funnel and considerably smaller at the bottom. Neither is automatically correct — but picking on cost per lead alone means finding out in month three what it actually cost.
| Market | CPL licensed | CPL offshore | FTD licensed | FTD offshore |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| United States | 70 – 140 | 55 – 120 | 500 – 1300 | 350 – 900 |
| United Kingdom | 60 – 120 | 50 – 105 | 550 – 1400 | 400 – 950 |
| Australia | 55 – 110 | 45 – 95 | 500 – 1200 | 380 – 900 |
| Germany | 45 – 90 | 38 – 80 | 400 – 950 | 320 – 750 |
| UAE | 45 – 90 | 35 – 75 | 450 – 1000 | 350 – 800 |
| Spain | 40 – 80 | 32 – 70 | 350 – 800 | 280 – 650 |
| Brazil | 20 – 45 | 15 – 38 | 200 – 500 | 150 – 400 |
| India | 10 – 25 | 7 – 20 | 90 – 280 | 70 – 220 |
Indicative ranges in USD, compiled from campaigns we have run and from operators we work alongside. Ranges, not guarantees.
Two things fall out of that table, and both get ignored regularly.
Cheap markets are cheap at both ends. India produces the lowest cost per lead in the table and the smallest deposits. A campaign judged on cost per lead will move budget there and quietly reduce revenue.
And the licensed premium is smaller than the deposit gap. In the United Kingdom licensed leads cost roughly twenty percent more and produce roughly forty percent larger deposits. That arithmetic is the argument for certification, and it is more persuasive than any compliance lecture.
Every stage below can be optimised toward, and most campaigns stop at the second because it reports well.
The gap between step two and step six is where the entire economics of forex acquisition lives. An agency measured on step two will deliver step two, brilliantly, for as long as you keep paying.
Four channels carry almost all of it, and which ones are open to you depends on licensing rather than preference.
What consistently does not work is treating Europe as one market. A flag, a currency, a local reference and a native-language creator change more than any headline ever will.
One account, seven European markets, two channels, measured to the deposit rather than to the lead.
| Market | First-time deposits | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Germany | 735 | Largest volume of the seven |
| France | 679 | Second, and close behind |
| Spain | 657 | Strong volume at lower cost than the north |
| Switzerland | 642 | Small population, disproportionate result |
| Italy | 468 | Steady throughout |
| Croatia | 389 | Fraction of the population, and cheaper to reach than any of the above |
| United Kingdom | 388 | Highest deposit value, highest competition |
Every market came in comfortably under the cost target agreed with the client, and the gap widened as segments narrowed. Exact costs stay closed under the agreement, as they would for you.
The row worth staring at is Croatia. A small market produced 389 deposits while the large ones produced between 388 and 735 — which is the argument against writing off markets because their population looks unimpressive in a planning document.
Small markets are not small returns. They are small competition.
Not a recommendation for your account, which we have not seen. A default, and the reasoning.
And the question worth asking whoever runs your campaigns this week: which event are we optimising toward, and on which domain does it fire? If the answer is vague, that is the finding.
Related
Forex marketing, measured on depositsOpen → The full case files with account figuresOpen → Work out what your budget turns intoOpen → Why conversions climb and deposits do notOpen →Less Bureaucracy.
More Work.
Specialists assigned to your account, decisions explained before they run, and a number at the end that means something. Start the conversation — it costs nothing and you will leave it knowing more than you arrived with.
Published August 2026 · More articles