ROAS vs. ROI: The Main Differences

Today, myriad advanced technologies give digital marketers the power to access and influence potential customers across multiple channels and devices.

Marketing analytics have also evolved. Business owners once considered return on investment (ROI) the gold standard metric to justify marketing spend and measure marketing campaign success. With the advent of e-commerce and digital marketing platforms and tools, return on ad spend (ROAS) measures the gross revenue a business earns for each dollar spent on digital advertising.

To help you determine the better measure of success for your business, we outline what ROAS and ROI are at a high level and how each measures marketing and advertising campaigns.

What is ROAS?‍

Return on ad spend (ROAS) measures the gross revenue your business earns for each dollar spent on digital advertising, such as Google Ads or other pay-per-click (PPC) platforms. A simple formula used to calculate ROAS is:

ROAS = Gross Revenue/Advertising Expenses
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ROAS formula example

Let’s say you’re running a short-term social media advertising campaign on Facebook to promote a new product. Your goal is to drive high-value conversions at a low cost per acquisition (CPA), and you want to measure your advertising campaign’s effectiveness using ROAS. Follow these steps:

1. Determine your target audience and advertising budget. The first step is determining your target audience and setting your advertising budget. Let’s say you want to target women aged 25 to 35 interested in fashion and beauty, and you have a $2,000 budget for your Facebook ads campaign.
2. Create the ad and optimize for conversion. Next, create a specific ad that will resonate with your target audience and optimize it for conversion. This includes designing eye-catching visuals and copy, selecting the right call to action (CTA), and setting up tracking pixels to monitor your campaign’s performance.
3. Determine the cost of advertising. After running your campaign, determine the total cost of your Facebook ads. This includes direct spending on advertising and expenditures on creative production and agency fees. Let’s say your total cost of advertising was $2,500.
4. Determine the gross revenue and conversion rate. Next, determine the gross revenue generated by your advertising campaign. This includes all sales generated by the campaign, including repeat purchases. Let’s say your gross revenue was $15,000.
5. Calculate ROAS. Now that you have the figures for gross revenue and advertising expenses, you can calculate your ROAS:

ROAS = Gross Revenue/Advertising Expenses

ROAS = $15,000/$2,500 = 6

Your ROAS of 6 indicates that you generated $6 in gross revenue for every dollar spent on Facebook ads. This suggests your advertising campaign was effective in generating high-value conversions at a low cost per acquisition.

ROAS is an important metric for measuring the effectiveness of your online campaigns and optimizing your marketing budget. By monitoring your ROAS, you can identify which campaigns generate the best returns and allocate your budget to maximize your net profit.

When to use ROAS

Measuring ROAS is necessary for any e-commerce company to get new business primarily from digital advertising. Even if your business uses various marketing channels, including digital advertising, understanding your ROAS can help you determine how to achieve the highest return on your online marketing ad dollars.

Here’s another simple example of ROAS: You pay $300 to Google Ads and generate $3,000 in revenue. Your ROAS ratio is 10 to 1, meaning you earn $10 for each dollar spent on ads.

The higher the revenue-to-ad-spend ratio, the better.‍

What is ROI?

In basic terms, marketing ROI (MROI) measures the return on investment (ROI) from the amount a company spends on marketing and advertising. You can calculate marketing ROI in a few ways, but the core formula is:

Marketing ROI = (Attributable Sales Growth – Marketing Cost)/Marketing Cost

ROI formula example

Let’s say you’re the marketing manager for a company, and you recently launched a digital marketing campaign to promote a product. You want to calculate the campaign’s ROI to determine its effectiveness. These are the steps you’d take:

1. Determine the attributable sales growth. The first step is to determine the attributable sales growth. You can directly attribute this amount of sales growth to the advertising campaign. Let’s say the campaign generated $125,000 in sales growth.
2. Determine the cost of the marketing campaign. Next, determine the cost of the marketing campaign. This includes all expenses associated with the campaign, such as advertising spend, creative production costs, and agency fees. Let’s say the total cost of the campaign was $20,000.
3. Plug the numbers into the formula. Now that you have the figures for attributable sales growth and marketing cost, you can plug them into the marketing ROI formula:

Marketing ROI = (Attributable Sales Growth – Marketing Cost)/Marketing Cost

Marketing ROI = ($125,000 - $20,000)/$20,000

Marketing ROI = $105,000/$20,000

Marketing ROI = 5.25

For every dollar spent on the advertising campaign, you earned $5.25 in attributable sales growth. An ROI of 5:1 is considered a good return on your marketing investment, indicating that the campaign was profitable.

When to use ROI

Companies use different methodologies to determine marketing costs that go into their ROI calculation based on the number of possible touch points and influencers leading to sales and revenue.

• Single attribution (first touch/last touch). First-touch attribution is when credit for the revenue is assigned to the first marketing touch point, such as a lead generated from a table or booth at an event or a new client intake form generated from an online ad. Last-touch attribution gives the conversion credit entirely to the final touch point, such as a marketing professional who acts on the client intake form and converts it into a sale.
• Single attribution with revenue cycle projections. Attributing marketing efforts to sales and revenue can take time, especially if your business has a longer sales cycle. This attribution method allows you to calculate a single attribution over a period of time.
• Multitouch attribution. If various marketing channels and influencers nurture customers toward a sale, multitouch attribution—which shares success (or failure) among various marketing activities—makes more sense than first- or final-touch attribution.
• Test and control groups. Comparing test and control group outcomes can help determine the effectiveness and impact of a new marketing campaign. Of course, this takes time, company resources, a sales volume big enough to make any findings statistically significant, and the know-how to create and execute the testing and analyze the data.
• Full market mix modeling. This data-driven analytic approach uses regression analysis to examine the historical relationship between marketing spend and sales data. This complex method requires resources and knowledge, as with test and control groups.

Key difference between ROI and ROAS

ROI measures the profit generated by marketing programs relative to their cost. It measures how marketing and advertising contribute to your company’s bottom line and determines if a marketing campaign is worth the investment.

On the other hand, ROAS measures the gross revenue generated for every dollar spent on online advertising. It won’t tell you if an ad spend is profitable for your company. You may get a small ROAS, but it can’t be a negative number (unlike negative ROI).

In fact, ROAS won’t necessarily tell you if an associated sale would have occurred anyway. Have you ever searched for a company to make a purchase on its website, then clicked on a company ad because it was the first thing you saw? Enough said.

Example of the difference between ROI and ROAS

Let’s say you want to measure the effectiveness of your recent marketing campaign. You have both the ROI and ROAS. Let’s cover how to use both metrics to evaluate your campaign.

‍ROI calculation example:

• Marketing cost. $10,000
• Attributable sales growth. $50,000
• ROI formula. (Attributable sales growth - Marketing cost) / Marketing cost
• ROI calculation. ($50,000 - $10,000) / $10,000 = 4

This means you earned $4 in attributable sales growth for every dollar spent on marketing.

ROAS calculation example:

• Gross revenue. $100,000
• Advertising expenses. $20,000
• ROAS formula. Gross revenue / Advertising expenses
• ROAS calculation. $100,000 / $20,000 = 5

This means you earned $5 in gross revenue for every dollar spent on advertising.

So, what’s the difference between ROI and ROAS?

ROI is a more comprehensive metric that considers all costs associated with a marketing campaign—not just advertising expenses. ROI includes overhead costs, salaries, and other expenses indirectly related to advertising.

On the other hand, ROAS focuses on the return generated from advertising expenses without broader consideration.

You can use ROI and ROAS together to evaluate the effectiveness of a marketing campaign from different angles. ROI provides a more comprehensive view of the campaign’s overall profitability, while ROAS measures the efficiency of the advertising spend.

ROI and ROAS are important key performance indicators (KPIs) for evaluating your marketing efforts. Look at both metrics to determine whether your marketing campaign generates a high ROI and your advertising expenses are effective.

What is a good ROI or ROAS?

A “good” ROI for your company largely depends on your cost structure, profitability margin, and how you attribute marketing costs. Since a 5:1 ROI ratio is in the middle of the ROI bell curve, anything over 4:1 is usually considered good for most businesses.

ROAS benchmarks differ across advertising channels and markets, so it’s difficult to say what a good ROAS is more broadly. However, Google estimated that for every $1 a business spends on Google Ads, an advertiser receives $11 in profit through Google Search and Ads.

When it comes to good ROAS, a good ROAS is one you feel comfortable with based on your business margins.

When calculating ROAS, be aware of the other direct costs or expenses associated with your digital ad campaign, so your final calculations reflect an accurate ad spend. These costs can include software provider and partner fees and commissions, affiliate commissions, network transaction fees, the average cost per click (CPC), and the number of impressions purchased.

Including these ad costs won’t reflect overall profitability like ROI, but it can provide a more accurate ROAS.

ROAS vs. ROI: Which should you use?

Several factors can go into your decision-making process concerning ROAS and ROI, such as your mix of digital advertising and traditional marketing programs, the importance of short-term revenue growth over long-term profits, and more.

ROAS looks at campaign-specific revenues rather than profit. Unlike ROI, it won’t tell you whether your paid advertising effort is profitable for the company. Still, it can greatly improve your online marketing initiatives and generate clicks and revenue.

For this reason and others, many companies look at ROAS and ROI to create results-oriented marketing strategies and campaigns.

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