ROAS Looks Good, But Where Is the Profit?

Your ad dashboard says 5× ROAS. Your bank balance says something else.

Take one month from the case study in The D2C Metrics Playbook. The brand spends ₹4 lakh on ads and Meta reports ₹20 lakh in attributed revenue. That is a 5× ROAS, and it looks like a great month. Then the real costs arrive:

5× ROAS did not mean 5× profit. It meant a ₹1.2 lakh loss.

The number that tells you the truth: break-even ROAS

Every brand has a ROAS below which each ad-driven sale loses money. It is set by your margins, not by the ad platform. In this example, contribution before ads is 29% of revenue, so break-even ROAS is 1 ÷ 0.29, about 3.4×. Above that, ads cover their own cost. You still need enough on top to pay for salaries, rent and software.

Most founders have never calculated this number. The playbook shows you how in under 10 minutes.

What the playbook shows you

• How to calculate contribution per order, the profit that is actually left after every variable cost
• Your break-even ROAS and break-even CAC, so you know which "good" campaigns are losing money
• Why platform ROAS and your real business numbers (MER) disagree, and which one to trust
• A step-by-step diagnosis for "ROAS looks good but money is lost"
• How to tell whether the fix is price, product cost, discounting, returns or acquisition

Built for Indian D2C brands: every example uses rupees and lakhs, and COD and RTO are covered in full.

Get the playbook

The D2C Metrics Playbook — ₹999
The full 90-page PDF: 16 parts, 45 chapters, 10 case studies. Instant download.

Playbook + Founder's Calculator — ₹1,499
The book plus a 6-tab spreadsheet that calculates your break-even ROAS, break-even CAC and COD economics from your own numbers.