ROAS Calculator

A campaign can have a positive ROAS and still lose money after cost of goods, payment fees, fulfillment, discounts, staffing, and overhead. Compare campaign ROAS with a break-even target based on your own economics.

Keep revenue and spend aligned to the same campaign, date range, currency, and attribution method. Differences between advertising platforms and analytics systems can change the amount of revenue credited to a campaign.

A campaign spends $5,000 and is credited with $20,000 in revenue: 4.00x ROAS. If product cost is 60% of revenue ($12,000) and shipping and payment fees are another 12% ($2,400), the campaign leaves $20,000 − $12,000 − $2,400 − $5,000 = $600 before overhead. A 4.00x ROAS here is barely profitable.

The same 4.00x ROAS on a product with 80% gross margin leaves far more. That is why ROAS targets must come from your own margins — the Break-Even ROAS Calculator turns a gross margin into the minimum ROAS a campaign needs to avoid losing money on ad spend.

ROAS counts only attributed revenue and media spend. It excludes product cost, fulfillment, refunds and returns, discounts, payment fees, agency or creative fees, staff time, and overhead. It also ignores repeat purchases outside the attribution window, which is where customer lifetime value comes in.

Because ROAS ignores cost, it is not a profit measure and not the same as ROI. ROI divides net return by the full investment; ROAS divides revenue by ad spend alone.

Zero revenue is a valid entry: $0 of attributed revenue on any positive spend returns 0.00x ROAS, meaning the campaign produced no credited revenue. Ad spend must be greater than zero, because ROAS divides by spend.

A ROAS below 1.00x means attributed revenue was less than the advertising cost alone, before any product or operating cost.