Glossary · Compter l’argent
ROAS
ROAS is the revenue generated by a campaign divided by what that campaign cost in advertising. The name comes from *return on ad spend* and it is expressed as a multiple: a ROAS of 4 means four in sales for one spent.
Les quatre divisions qui décident si une campagne mérite un euro de plus. The forty terms of the trade
What it is for
It puts a spend and a revenue in the same sentence, which neither does alone. A €3,000 budget says nothing, €12,000 of turnover says nothing either; their ratio says whether to carry on. It is the figure that allows or forbids raising a budget — provided you know what it does not look at.
How it is calculated
Attributed revenue divided by ad spend, over the same period and the same scope. For €3,000 spent and €12,000 of attributed sales, ROAS is 4. Both numbers must cover the same date range: a month's revenue divided by a week's spend measures nothing at all.
The classic mistake
Looking for the right ROAS anywhere other than in your own margin. The break-even threshold is the inverse of the margin rate: at 70% margin it falls to 1.4, at 20% it rises to 5. The same ROAS of 4 is therefore very comfortable in the first case and loss-making in the second — no benchmark from elsewhere replaces that calculation.
Two divisions people take for each other
ROI
- Profit divided by all costs.
- Accounts for what the sale cost.
- Requires your accounting.
- Judges a decision.
ROAS
- Revenue divided by ad spend alone.
- Leaves out margin, production and salaries.
- Needs two numbers.
- Judges a campaign.
ROAS does not replace ROI: it answers faster, over a narrower scope. Confusing them means calling a campaign profitable when it is not.
What Subtraq does with it
The ROAS column only appears once a spend exists: with no spend there is no division to make, and an absent column beats a dash. Meta spend is re-imported at most once every six hours, and a ROAS below 1 is visible at a glance in the table.
Read next
Un terme seul ne sert à rien. Voici ceux qui le rendent utilisable.
ROAS and ad spend
Open the page →The ROAS calculator
Open the page →Cost per acquisition (CPA)
Read the definition →Average order value
Read the definition →Attributed sale
Read the definition →« ROAS », une fois posé sur de vraies ventes
These divisions are only worth something if the revenue on top has a known origin. The calculator does them without signing up; the rest of the work is knowing where the money came from.
Open the calculator