Saily is the biggest App Store advertiser in EU eSIM apps. It ran 3,544 ad records across all 25 EU storefronts in the last year, roughly four times what Nomad spent and about 23 times what Airalo did. It also spent the spring switching off the one ad it had proof for.
Everything below comes from Apple's public Ad Repository, the transparency dataset the EU Digital Services Act requires. It shows every App Store ad an advertiser ran, where, in what language, and for how long. The repository lists the publisher as Nordvpn S.A. Data window ends 22 July 2026.
The proven ad is gone
Saily's longest-running creative was an English line, "eSIM plans for mobile internet", running across 14 countries. Apple dates it past its one-year window, which means Saily had at least twelve months of evidence that it converted. It was last recorded on 8 April 2026. Then it stopped.
What replaced it did not last. "Prepaid mobile internet abroad" started on 6 April, went out across 17 countries, and switched off on 17 June after 72 days. The current wide English line, "Get data and a second number", started around 15 June and is 36 days old across 10 countries.
Three wide English creatives in one year, each shorter-lived than the one before. Read against the survivor board, where three smaller rivals each hold a creative past a year, that is a lot of movement for the category's biggest spender.
The one thing it never touched is Portuguese
One Saily creative predates the whole rebuild. "Dados móveis instantaneamente" has run in Portugal since 17 August 2025, 338 days, and it was still recorded on 21 July 2026. It is the app's oldest surviving ad and it exists in a single storefront.
That is worth sitting with. Saily's most durable asset in Europe is not the wide English line it ran everywhere, it is a translated line in one small market that nobody seems to have touched.
The 2026 rebuild is market by market
Between April and June, Saily built a per-market set, and most of it is still running:
| Market | Creative | Started | Days running |
|---|---|---|---|
| Portugal | "Dados móveis instantaneamente" | 17 Aug 2025 | 338 |
| Germany, Austria | "Mobiles Internet ohne Roaming" | 6 Apr 2026 | 106 |
| Sweden | "eSIM: Get mobile GB abroad" | 13 Apr 2026 | 99 |
| Netherlands | "Digitale simkaart voor data" | 23 May 2026 | 59 |
| France | "Données mobiles instantanées" | 26 May 2026 | 56 |
| Italy | "Dati internet mobili veloci" | 26 May 2026 | 56 |
| Spain | "eSIM: datos móviles al momento" | early Jun 2026 | 43 |
Two details stand out. The French and Italian lines are near-literal translations of the Portuguese survivor, "instant mobile data", so Saily took the one thing that has held for it and cloned the idea into the big markets. And Sweden got an English creative while every other named market got its own language, which reads as a deliberate call about where English still converts.
Where the money goes
Almost entirely into search results. In the records we retrieved, Saily ran 1,238 search-results placements against 8 product-page placements. It is buying people who already typed something like "esim" or "data abroad", and buying almost nothing on the browse surfaces. Nomad and Ubigi, the two smallest advertisers on the board, are the ones paying for Search tab and Today tab placement.
The product changed and the ads show it
The current wide English line sells "a second number" alongside data. The app's own store name now reads "Saily: eSIM + phone number". You can watch a feature launch land in the ad copy without anyone announcing it, which is the everyday use of this data: a rival's positioning shifts in their ads before it shows up in their marketing site.
What a founder can take from this
- A year-old ad is an asset. Retiring one costs you the proof. Saily had twelve months of evidence on one line and switched it off, and nothing since has run longer than 106 days. If you have a creative that has held for months, add a challenger next to it rather than replacing it.
- Your smallest market may hold your best copy. The Portuguese line is Saily's durable winner and it runs in one country. Translate the survivor, not the newest test.
- Watch the direction, not the snapshot. Saily is mid-rebuild. Pulling it once tells you what is live; pulling it monthly tells you it is on its third wide English line this year, which is the actual signal.
You can pull Saily, or any advertiser in your category, at recao.app, free, no account, in about a minute. The same view gives you every creative, its span, its markets, and whether it is still running.
Method note: figures are computed from Apple's public Ad Repository (DSA Article 39), swept across all 25 EU storefronts, data window ending 22 July 2026. "Days running" is the span from a creative's first to last recorded impression across those markets, and "still running" means the creative was recorded on 21 July 2026. Apple reports creatives older than its one-year window as over a year rather than a date. Record counts are repository records, a proxy for volume, not euros. Longevity is a proxy for performance, not a measured conversion rate.