ROAS tells you how much revenue you earn back for every euro you put into advertising.
ROAS, short for Return on Ad Spend, is a simple scoreboard for your advertising. You take the revenue your ads generated and divide it by what you spent to get it. If you spent €1,000 and made €4,000, your ROAS is 4 — often written as "4x" or "400%".
It answers one question every business owner cares about: is my ad money working? A higher number means each euro is pulling more weight.
Imagine you run a local home-renovation company. Last month you spent €5,000 on Google and Meta ads. Those ads brought in 25 booked jobs worth €30,000 in revenue. Your ROAS is €30,000 ÷ €5,000 = 6x. In plain terms, every €1 of advertising came back as €6 of sales. If a competitor spends the same €5,000 but only earns €15,000, their ROAS is 3x — they are getting half the bang for their buck.
ROAS is the fastest way to compare campaigns, channels, and budgets on one yardstick. It helps you decide where to pour more money and where to pull back. But be careful: standard ROAS often counts every sale as equal, even though a €200 customer and a €20,000 customer are worlds apart. It can also count revenue that would have happened anyway. Treat ROAS as a starting signal, not the final verdict — pairing it with the true value of each customer gives you a far more honest picture.
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