What is ROAS (return on ad spend)?

ROAS, or return on ad spend, measures how much revenue you earn for every dollar spent on advertising. The formula is ROAS = revenue from ads / ad spend. A ROAS of 4, or 400%, means you made four dollars for every dollar spent.

What counts as a good ROAS

There is no universal answer, because it depends entirely on your margins. A business with 80% gross margin can be profitable at a 2x ROAS, while one at 20% margin loses money at 3x. The number that actually matters is your break-even ROAS, which is 1 / gross margin. Anything above it makes money. You can work it out with our free break-even ROAS calculator, or compute plain ROAS with the ROAS calculator.

The catch with reported ROAS

The ROAS your ad platform shows is only as complete as the conversions it can see, and browser pixels miss a large share of them. Your true ROAS is usually higher than the platform reports, which means bidding is optimising on an incomplete number and you may be cutting profitable campaigns. Recovering the missed conversions, as Trakt does, gives you a ROAS you can actually trust to bid on.