ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Definition

Revenue generated divided by advertising costs. Every dollar spent on ads should return multiple dollars in revenue, or you're funding other people's businesses.

Example Usage

Our paid search ROAS is 4:1, meaning every $1 in ad spend generates $4 in revenue.

Origin

E-commerce metric, became standard with Google Ads and Amazon Advertising platforms

Fun Fact

A 'good' ROAS depends entirely on margins—2:1 is disastrous for low-margin products but excellent for high-margin services

Source: E-commerce Marketing Metrics

Related Terms

Beginner

branding

The art of making people feel feelings about your logo, transforming generic products into lifestyle choices through strategic manipulation of colors, fonts, and emotions. The marketing discipline that convinces consumers that one virtually identical product is worth three times more than another because of its 'story.' Involves millions of dollars to answer the question: 'But what's our vibe?'

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

marketing automation platform

Software that automatically sends emails, scores leads, and nurtures prospects based on behavioral triggers, allowing marketers to annoy people at scale without manual effort. It's how brands pretend mass communication is personalized.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

flooding

Overwhelming someone or a system with excessive volume of something—be it data, requests, marketing messages, or literal water. The goal is saturation; the result is usually chaos or capitulation.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

search engine marketing

Paid advertising on search engines, primarily Google, where you bid on keywords to appear when people search for things. It's the practice of paying to skip the line in search results, assuming you can outbid your competitors.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Intermediate

lookalike

In digital advertising, an audience segment created by finding people who resemble your existing customers like some kind of algorithmic clone army. It's Facebook's way of saying "we found more people just as gullible as your current buyers." Marketers love these because stalking one customer base apparently wasn't enough.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Beginner

brand voice

The distinctive personality and emotional tone a brand uses in all communications, from tweets to customer service emails. It's what makes Wendy's roast people on Twitter while your bank sounds like a lawyer wrote everything—which they probably did.

📣 Marketing / Advertising

Translate This Term

See “ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)” in Corporate Speak, Gen-Z Slang, Pirate Speak, and more.

Try the Translator

Share This Term

Post on X Share on Facebook Share on LinkedIn

Discover a Term

Beginner

Good people

The ultimate seal of approval for humans who pass the vibe check—trustworthy, decent, and generally not terrible. It's...