ROAS can flatter you
Return on ad spend feels like a hard number, but it hides the only thing that really matters: profit. A 4x return sounds healthy, until you subtract product costs, shipping, returns and fees and find the campaign actually lost money.
What to measure instead
Contribution margin tells you what a sale really earns after the costs of delivering it. Optimise to that, and your ad decisions start lining up with your bank balance instead of a dashboard.
You can't spend ROAS. You can spend contribution margin. Optimise for the one that pays the wages.
We walk every client through a simple model. Revenue, minus cost of goods, minus fulfilment, minus the ad cost itself. What's left is the truth. Sometimes the campaign with the lower return is the one quietly making you money.
