Metrics and measurement
ROAS
ROAS is revenue divided by the spend that produced it, expressed as a multiple. A campaign that returned 30,000 in revenue on 10,000 of spend has a ROAS of 3.
Also called return on ad spend.
ROAS is the number executives ask for, because it converts marketing activity into a figure comparable with any other spend. Making it trustworthy requires attribution that actually works: unique discount codes, tracked links, or a post-purchase survey asking where the customer heard about you.
It systematically undercounts creator marketing. A follower who sees a post, does not click, and buys through search a fortnight later is invisible to code and link tracking, so reported ROAS is a floor rather than the full effect.
Common questions
- What is a good ROAS for influencer marketing?
- Many consumer brands treat a ROAS of 2 to 4 as healthy for creator campaigns, but the threshold depends entirely on gross margin. A business with 80 percent margins profits at a ROAS well below one that operates on 30 percent.
Related terms
- Conversion tracking
- Conversion tracking is how a brand ties a sale back to the creator who drove it, usually through a unique discount code, a tracked link, or a survey at checkout asking how the customer found the brand.
- Affiliate marketing
- In an affiliate deal a creator earns a percentage of the sales they generate, tracked through a unique discount code or link, rather than a fixed fee.
- Earned media value
- Earned media value is an estimate of what a campaign's organic reach and engagement would have cost to buy as paid advertising. It is a modelled figure, not revenue.
- CPM
- CPM is the cost of a thousand impressions, calculated as the fee divided by impressions, multiplied by one thousand. It is the standard way to compare the efficiency of creator deals against each other and against paid media.
Distinct is the workspace where brands and creators run the work behind these terms. For brands, for creators, or back to the full glossary.