Return on ad spend (ROAS)

What it is#

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the revenue attributed to advertising divided by the amount spent on that advertising. A ROAS of 4 means every $1 of spend produced $4 of revenue. It is the headline efficiency number for any paid-media engagement.

ROAS is deliberately simple, which is also its weakness. It says nothing about margin (revenue is not profit), nothing about incrementality (some of that revenue would have happened anyway), and everything about it depends on the attribution window used to credit the sale.

Why it matters for agencies#

For paid-media agencies, ROAS is usually the metric the retainer is judged against, which makes it the most scrutinized line in the brief. Two things make it contentious in client reporting:

• Window sensitivity. The same campaign can show ROAS of 3 or 6 depending on whether conversions are credited on a 1-day or 28-day window. The window has to be stated, fixed, and consistent — or the number is unfalsifiable.
• Platform self-grading. Ad platforms report the ROAS of their own campaigns. An honest brief reconciles platform-reported ROAS against an independent revenue source rather than passing the platform's number through unexamined.

In SendBriefs specifically#

The paid-media template renders ROAS per channel with the attribution window stated inline, and supports pulling revenue from a billing or CRM source so the denominator and numerator don't both come from the ad platform.