What is return on ad spend?
ROAS expresses attributed revenue relative to advertising spend. A common calculation is attributed revenue divided by ad spend.
ROAS = attributed revenue ÷ ad spend. In an illustrative example, 10,000 currency units of ad spend and 30,000 units of attributed revenue produce 3× ROAS, also written as 300%.
If a platform reports conversion value rather than revenue, check what that value represents. A configured value should not silently be relabeled as cash sales.
Does a ROAS above one mean profit?
A revenue-based ROAS does not deduct product, shipping, staffing or other operating costs. Three times the advertising spend in revenue does not mean three times that spend in profit.
Margin and the remaining costs determine the economics. CPC and conversion rate supply other parts of the picture, without replacing those cost records.
What must match before comparing platforms?
Check the attribution window, revenue definition, refund handling and spend scope. Several platforms may attribute the same order to themselves; their reported revenue cannot simply be added together as independent sales.
Keep a reported estimate separate from a calculation that can be reproduced. The ChatGPT ad evidence review retains cases whose published revenue and spend do not reconcile to their stated ROAS. The missing denominator is a limit, rather than a reason to select the largest return as a forecast.
Sources and scope
Source-language entry records a source check on 2026-10-18. This adaptation preserves that provenance and does not represent a new audit of the cited pages.