Digital Marketing
What is ROAS, and what counts as a good one?
ROAS means return on ad spend: the sales your ads produced divided by what you spent. Spend 100 and make 400 in sales, and your ROAS is 4. There is no universal "good" ROAS, because the number you need depends entirely on your profit margin.
ShoaibUpdated 3 min read
How do I calculate it?
ROAS = sales from ads ÷ ad spend
- Spend KD 200, get KD 800 in sales → ROAS 4
- Spend KD 200, get KD 300 in sales → ROAS 1.5
What ROAS do I need to break even?
Work from your margin, not from someone else's success story:
| Your profit margin | Break-even ROAS |
|---|---|
| 20% | 5.0 |
| 30% | 3.3 |
| 50% | 2.0 |
| 70% | 1.4 |
Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ your margin. Anything above that is profit; anything below it loses money, however good it looks in Ads Manager.
Why do platforms report a higher ROAS than reality?
- Meta, TikTok and Snap each claim sales they think they influenced, so totals can overlap.
- Some buyers would have purchased anyway.
- So compare with your store's own total sales before and during the campaign.
What should I do with a low ROAS?
- Check your margin first. Sometimes the price is the problem, not the ad.
- Raise average order value with bundles, so each sale pays for more ad spend.
- Fix the destination. A slow or confusing page wastes good clicks.
- Cut the weakest ad rather than the whole campaign.
Do the maths first with our free ROAS calculator, then read what CPM, CPC and CTR mean.
Want someone accountable to your ROAS, not to likes? See our Meta Ads service.