NatWest Accelerator Events Free one-day marketing seminar at the NatWest Accelerator, Milton Keynes · 10 November 2026 Free marketing seminar · NatWest Accelerator, Milton Keynes · 10 Nov 2026 Free seminar · 10 Nov 2026
NatWest Accelerator, MK
Get your free invite →Invite →

Home › Blog › Google Ads

Google Ads

What Is ROAS In Google Ads?

What Is ROAS In Google Ads?
Read the video transcript

What is ROAS in Google Ads? Good question. So ROAS is Hasanul return on ad spend. Every time you give a dollar or a pound or whichever currency you have to Google how much are you getting back then you need to work out what is a breakeven ROAS the bare minimum where you it is not costing you money to run ads and what is a profitable ROAS and what I mean by this in simple terms what you want to do is let's say you are selling a product.

Right? This cost you a pound as the cost of goods which we call as cogs. Then you say okay my acquisition cost to acquire a customer is one pound. So you know that to sell one item it is costing you two. That's your minimum ROAS now obviously you will have other expenses. Rent, rates, electricity, staff and all of that.

So your break even needs to be bare minimum where you can start scaling the campaigns without costing you any money or you also need to add an agency fee of freelancers who’s what you are working on your account. That is what we call ROAS. So to work out your profitability what I would recommend you do is you look at your profit and loss and see how much of your expenses are on marketing and advertising compared to your turnover.

So, you don’t want it more than ideally over 15% maximum 20% in your PNL. So, ROAS is as simple as that return on ad spend. Some companies we are working with, they need a minimum of 1 to 8. That means every time they spend $1 on Google Ads, they need $8 back to be profitable. Some of the companies need 22X or 3X and that's what these are the terms which you will find people talking about is to you know 2X or 3X or 300% is all the same.

So that's what we mean by ROAS.

Understanding Google Ads could be overwhelming when it comes to calculating revenue. Advertisers need to know their earned revenue at particular stages while running campaigns. Predicting revenue manually can bring various errors that could disturb your budget for further spending.

Return On Ad Spending (ROAS) refers to the calculation of your revenue for every $1 you spend on an ad campaign.

Free NatWest Accelerator event

Get Found, Get Chosen, Get Your Time Back

A free one-day marketing seminar in Milton Keynes · 10 November 2026

Get your free invite →

If you’re a beginner and don’t know what ROAS does in Google Ads, then you’re at the right place. This blog post will walk you through everything you need to know about ROAS and when to use it. So without any further delay, let’s get straight into it.

Get your free Marketing Action PlanNot sure where to start? Answer a few questions and get your plan in about a minute. No email needed.

Get my plan →

What Is ROAS?

Return On Ad Spend (ROAS) is a marketing metric that quantifies how much money your company makes for every dollar it spends on advertising. ROAS is, for all intents and purposes, the same as another statistic you’re surely aware of: return on investment, or ROI.

The money you spend on digital advertising is the investment on which you’re keeping track of returns in this situation.

ROAS assesses the success of your advertising efforts at the most basic level; the more effective your advertising messages connect with your prospects, the more income you’ll make from each dollar spent on advertising. Hence, the more your return on investment (ROI) is, the better.

If you’re so motivated, you can track ROAS at several levels inside your Google Ads account, including the account, campaign, ad group, etc. You can compute ROAS as long as you know how much you’re spending and making at that given level.

How Does It Work?

ROAS is all about calculating the gross revenue after excluding every expense incurred during the campaign. From ad charges to operational costs, and freelancers’ charges, total revenue is calculated on every $1 spent on the ad.

You can use the metric when determining where to spend your advertising money. For instance, if you spend $1,500 per month on display advertisements and the audience that clicks through buy $7,000 per month from your web store, your Display Ads ROAS is $7,000 / $1,500 = 4.67.

Contrary to this, if you spend $4000 on a PPC campaign, the client’s click-through rate by $12,000 per month, and the average ROAS comes to 3.

Similarly, if you invest $4000 on your PPC campaign, it will increase the click-through rate by $12,000 per month. So now to calculate the average ROAS here simply divide the click-through rate by your investment, i.e.

Uzair KharawalaLIVE
Free weekly YouTube live

Live every Tuesday at 2pm UK. Bring your marketing questions.

Get your Google, local SEO and AI questions answered live.

Join for free

$12,000/$4000= 3 (Average ROAS)

The examples mentioned above also prove that the ROAS of Display Ads is more than a PPC campaign. So please don’t waste your time and energy on a PPC campaign as it has less ROAS than Display Ads.

Difference Between ROAS And ROI

Return on Assets Sold (ROAS) appears to be similar to Return on Investment. ROI, on the other hand, considers profit rather than revenue.

ROI

Whereas,

ROAS

To return to our example, if we wanted to compute the ROI from our Display Ads, the profit formula would be something along these lines:

Profit = Ad revenue – Goods Cost – Goods Cost Sold – Allocated Operating Cost

The issue here is that many of these words need to involve the accounting department. As an example, consider the cost of goods sold. We might be able to compute the Cost of Goods Sold if we maintain a note of which things were sold due to the advertisements and what the cost of these items is on our books.

On the other hand, the Allocated Operating Costs are likely to be more difficult. The accounting procedures of the company determine the cost. Furthermore, many organizations lack a clear methodology for assigning operational costs to certain sales.

Many businesses find it difficult to assign a profit to sales generated by a specific advertising campaign or type of advertising. Even if your company already has this information, getting it and processing it promptly when you need to optimise your ad spend can be difficult.

Calculating ROAS is a lot easier than calculating ROI. As a result, many marketers use it as their primary criterion for determining how much to spend on advertising.

Wrap Up

The Return On Assets Sold (ROAS) is a useful indicator for assessing the relative efficacy of advertising campaigns. However, before you use it, make sure you understand the aspects of your company that define what your goal ROAS should be.

With a low ROAS, high-margin enterprises may generate money. Businesses with weaker operating margins, on the other hand, may require a reasonably high ROAS to avoid losing money on digital advertising.

Also, if you utilise a program to compute ROAS (such as Google Analytics), make sure you understand how the technology calculates it. The ROAS estimate might be spot on or way off, depending on your business model and how you set up your tool.

Uzair Kharawala

Written by Uzair Kharawala

Partner at SF Digital Studios, a Google Premier Partner agency. Uzair has been helping businesses grow with Google Ads since 2002 and teaches it every week on YouTube.

Book A Call →Subscribe on YouTube for new videos every weekday →
Free every week

Get our best Google Ads tips by email

New articles and videos, straight to your inbox. Unsubscribe any time.

We respect your privacy at all times. Privacy Policy

You may also like

Read the blog →

Your next customers are out there. Let's go and get them.

Tell us where you want your business to be, and we'll show you how to get there.

Book A Call →or get your free Google Health Check →
Happy clients

Don't take our word for it

4.9 from 157 Google reviews, plus case studies and client videos.

See our happy clients →
"It has now been 3 months since we started and our sales have increased 300%."
Ruhi Latif Rafplay, Dubai
"Uzair and Farzana are two of the most honest, sincere and trustworthy people you will ever meet."
Gavin Morgan GDM Jewellery · Google review
"If I needed a campaign built, this is one of the rare few people IN THE WORLD I would trust to do it properly."
Hemmel Amrania Google Ads professional · Google review
Book A Call →
Chat with us on WhatsApp