The 5 signs you're scaling the wrong market, the metric that tells you before you burn the budget, and the scale-or-cut decision rule.

Most "our growth stalled" problems are actually "we scaled the wrong geo" problems in disguise. A cheap-install market looks like a win at the top of the funnel — low CPI, rising volume — right up until you notice the users never activate, never pay, and never come back. Geo quality is invisible at CPI and only becomes visible three stages down.

Inside:
• CPI is low but activation is weak — why cheap installs that never reach the core moment are tourists, not users
• Purchase / subscription collapses after install — the willingness-to-pay you didn't buy
• Retention drops faster than in core markets — the truest signal of geo product-market fit
• Creative works in one market and fails in another — message-market misfit, and why you localize instead of translate
• Blended CAC worsens as spend increases — the trailing verdict of the first four

Plus the fix (creators who live there, local device networks, four-layer localization) and the scale-or-cut decision rule.

A low CPI is not a reason to scale; a healthy downstream funnel is.