Stop reporting ROAS to your CEO. Report this instead.

Platform ROAS is the number every ad dashboard puts front and center, and it flatters everyone. Meta and Google both take credit for the same customer, and the sum of platform-reported revenue often exceeds what actually hit the bank.

The metric we report instead

We report blended marketing efficiency: total new-customer revenue divided by total marketing spend, across every channel, for the same period. It can’t be gamed by attribution windows, and it answers the question your CEO is actually asking: is marketing paying for itself?

How to calculate it

• Pull new-customer revenue from your CRM or store, not from ad platforms.
• Add up every marketing cost: media, agency fees, tools and content.
• Divide revenue by cost, monthly, and track the trend over at least two quarters.

Where platform numbers still help

Channel-level ROAS is still useful for decisions inside a channel, like which ad set or keyword gets more budget. Just don’t present it as proof that marketing works. Pair the blended number with customer acquisition cost and payback period, and leadership will trust the report again.