What is a good ROAS for Facebook ads?

Break-even ROAS is the number your ads have to beat before they make money, and it comes from your margin, not from a benchmark.

1. Work out your gross margin per order: price minus product cost, shipping, payment fees and platform fees, divided by price. Craftshift says the margin should already include Shopify transaction fees, payment processing and average shipping, and if it does not, your real break-even is higher.
2. Divide 1 by that margin. The formula is break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ gross margin.
3. Check it against the table: a 20% margin needs 5.0x, 30% needs 3.3x, 40% needs 2.5x, 50% needs 2.0x, 60% needs 1.7x and 70% needs 1.4x.
4. Add a cushion. Craftshift lists 3.0x or more as a profitable target for a 50% margin.

At a 50% margin, for example, Influee says each dollar of revenue can absorb up to $0.50 of ad cost before you lose money.

Meta defines purchases ROAS as purchase conversion value divided by amount spent, based on your connected Meta Business Tools and attributed to your ads, per the Meta Business Help Center. Meta adds that the figure may be estimated, and for some results, such as iOS 14 campaigns, it may not be calculated.

To add it as a column, follow Meta's Customize Columns steps:

1. In Ads Manager, click Campaigns, Ad Sets or Ads, depending on the level you want to read.
2. Click the Columns dropdown and select Customize Columns.
3. Tick the columns you want. The Conversions group includes website purchases and cost-per-conversion metrics, so pick amount spent, purchases and the purchase ROAS column there.
4. Click Apply. Tick Save as preset to keep the layout, and reopen it later from Column Presets.

ROAS needs a purchase value to divide by. If you sell appointments or quotes, track cost per lead instead and use your own close rate to judge it.

It is the ROAS inside an attribution window. Meta credits an action to your ad if someone viewed or clicked it and then acted within a set number of days. The options include 1-day click, 7-day click, 1-day click and 1-day view, and 7-day click and 1-day view.

Keep the same window every time you compare two weeks, or the change you see is the window, not the ads.

Trendtrack claims iOS attribution loss means real returns may be 20-30% higher than Ads Manager shows. That is a third-party estimate, not a Meta figure, so cross-check against the revenue in your store for the same dates before you act on it.

With a Sales objective and the Maximize value of conversions goal, Meta lets you enter a ROAS goal, and the target can be anything from 0.001 to 1,000.00. Easyinsights notes it is an optimization target, not a hard ceiling or floor, and that Meta only spends when it predicts it can meet the target, so an aggressive goal can leave budget unspent.

1. Run the campaign without a goal first and read the ROAS it earns.
2. Enter your break-even from the first step, or slightly above it, as the goal.
3. If spend drops sharply, lower the goal. Do not raise it again until results have settled.

Influee's advice is to work out break-even first, then put effort into creative, since stronger UGC-style video lifts click-through and pulls more conversions from the same spend. Then audit your tracking, because measurement gaps can make results look worse than they are.

If making new ads is the bottleneck, ScaleShot is one option. We learn your store from its link, logo, colours and voice, make image and short video ads, and launch them to your Meta account, asking before any change. Image ads cost 10 or 20 credits and video costs 10 credits per second. ScaleShot runs Meta only, does not guarantee sales or ROAS, and Meta bills ad spend separately.

For the basics of setting up a campaign, read our guide to running Facebook ads and our walkthrough on making an ad. For spend levels, see our breakdown of what Facebook ads cost.

• Copying a round-number rule. Dashthis says 3x or more is generally considered good, while Trendtrack calls the 4:1 rule a Google benchmark that assumes margins most online brands do not have. Your margin decides.
• Using revenue margin before fees. Leaving out shipping and payment fees makes break-even look lower than it is.
• Comparing across industries. Beauty averages 1.57 while automotive parts reach 6.76, so another shop's number tells you little. For more reference points, see our Facebook ads benchmarks guide.
• Switching attribution windows mid-test. The same ads read differently under 1-day click and 7-day click.
• Judging a campaign on ROAS alone. A high ROAS on tiny spend can mean little revenue. Check total profit too. New to this? Start with our beginner's guide to Facebook ads.