How to read these numbers
ROAS vs. ROI
ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend. It compares campaigns well, but it does not tell you whether you made money. Break-even ROAS is 1 ÷ your margin: at a 40% margin you need 2.5x just to stop losing. ROI here uses gross profit after every cost you entered.
CAC, LTV and payback
CAC is what it costs you, fully loaded, to win one customer. LTV is the gross profit that customer is worth over time. A common healthy range is LTV at least 3x CAC with payback inside 6–12 months. A lower ratio can still work with fast payback; a high ratio with 18-month payback can starve you of cash.
What the model ignores
- Attribution overlap. Search and social both claim the same order, so check against your store or CRM totals.
- Seasonality and creative fatigue. Results drift week to week.
- Cash timing, tax and wider overheads.
Starting-point benchmarks come from published ad-platform studies, such as WordStream. They are US-based, so we scale them for your market. Always replace them with your own account data.