Work out what your marketing really earned
Enter one campaign’s numbers and get the full metric table, the profit truth behind the ROAS, your break-even points, a funnel reconciliation from impressions to conversions, and target and scaling scenarios. Every metric names its denominator, because most marketing arguments are really arguments about denominators.
| Metric | Value | What it is |
|---|
| Stage | Count | Rate from previous stage |
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Disclaimer: This calculator gives estimates for general information only. It is not financial, medical or other professional advice. Figures are only as good as the tracking and attribution behind the numbers you enter.
What this calculator does
Marketing platforms report the metrics that make marketing look good. This page takes the same raw numbers, spend, impressions, clicks, page views, conversions and revenue, and works out the metrics that decide whether a campaign actually made money, including the ones the platforms leave out: profit after margin, true ROI, and the break-even points below which a healthy looking ROAS is quietly losing money. It then reconciles the funnel stage by stage, so you can see where people actually dropped out, and runs your targets and a scaling test against the same figures.
How to use it
- Use one campaign, one period, one attribution setting. Every number must describe the same traffic over the same dates. Mixing a month of spend with a week of revenue manufactures nonsense with great precision.
- The gross margin is the honesty field. Revenue is not profit. If a $90 order costs $54 to fulfil, the margin is 40%, and only $36 of that order was ever available to pay for ads. Enter the real margin and the break-even figures become real too.
- Page views are worth entering. The gap between clicks and page views is where tracking loss, slow pages and accidental clicks hide. A view rate under about 70% is a problem to fix before any budget decision.
- Targets and the scale test are scenarios, not forecasts. They hold today’s efficiency constant on purpose, so you can see what the target demands. Real campaigns get less efficient as they scale; the limitations section is blunt about this.
How each metric is calculated
- CTR (click-through rate) = clicks / impressions x 100.
- CPC (cost per click) = spend / clicks.
- CPM (cost per 1,000 impressions) = spend / impressions x 1,000.
- Conversion rate = conversions / clicks x 100.
- CPA (cost per acquisition) = spend / conversions.
- Average order value = revenue / conversions.
- ROAS (return on ad spend) = revenue / spend, shown as a multiple and a percentage.
- Gross profit on sales = revenue x gross margin. Profit after ads = gross profit – spend. ROI = profit after ads / spend x 100. ROI uses profit net of the ad cost, which is why it can be negative while ROAS looks cheerful.
- Break-even ROAS = 1 / gross margin. Break-even revenue = spend / gross margin. Break-even CPA = average order value x gross margin: the most you can pay for a conversion before the order itself loses money.
- Funnel rates divide each stage by the stage before it; the overall rate divides conversions by impressions.
Worked example
A campaign spends $2,000, buys 100,000 impressions, earns 2,500 clicks, 2,200 landing page views and 100 conversions worth $9,000, at a 40% gross margin.
- CTR 2.50%, CPC $0.80, CPM $20.00.
- Conversion rate 4.00%, CPA $20.00, average order value $90.00.
- ROAS 4.50x. Gross profit on the sales is $3,600, profit after ads is $1,600, and ROI is 80.00%. This campaign genuinely made money.
- Break-even ROAS is 2.50x: below that, the same gross margin loses money however good the dashboard looks. Break-even revenue is $5,000 and break-even CPA is $36.00, so the actual $20.00 CPA has real headroom.
- The funnel: 88.00% of clicks became page views, and 4.55% of views converted. Overall, 0.10% of impressions became conversions.
- A target CPA of $25 means the current spend could buy 80 conversions at target; the campaign produced 100, so it is beating its target. A target ROAS of 5x would need $10,000 of revenue from this spend, $1,000 more than it made. Scaling the spend to $5,000 at today’s CPA projects 250 conversions; at today’s ROAS, $22,500 of revenue.
The same campaign at a 15% margin: gross profit falls to $1,350, profit after ads becomes a $650 loss, ROI is -32.50%, and break-even ROAS jumps to 6.67x, above the 4.50x achieved. Identical ads, identical ROAS, opposite verdict. This is why the margin field exists.
Reading your results
Start with the break-even panel, not the ROAS. If your ROAS is above break-even, the campaign makes money at your margin; the distance between the two numbers is your safety cushion when costs rise or efficiency slips. If it is below, no CTR improvement story changes the verdict: the economics fail before the creative does.
Then read the funnel from the top. A weak CTR is an audience or creative problem. A healthy CTR with a weak click to view rate is a page speed or tracking problem. A healthy view rate with a weak conversion rate is an offer or landing page problem. Each stage points at a different fix, and spending more money fixes none of them.
Finally, compare CPA with break-even CPA rather than with last month’s CPA. Break-even CPA is what a conversion is worth to you; the other is just history. And if you use this campaign to justify a budget increase, read the scale test as an upper bound: it assumes the next $3,000 buys clicks as cheaply as the first $2,000 did, which is rarely how auctions behave.
Limitations
- Attribution is a model, not an observation. Conversions credited to a campaign depend on the window and model your platform uses (last click, data driven, view-through). Change the setting and the same campaign gets different numbers. This page calculates faithfully from what you enter; it cannot audit where the numbers came from.
- Efficiency does not survive scaling unchanged. The scale test holds CPA and ROAS constant to make the arithmetic clear. In live auctions, more spend usually means broader audiences and rising costs, so treat projections as best cases.
- The margin must be a true gross margin. If it quietly excludes fulfilment, payment fees or returns, every profit figure on this page is flattered. When in doubt, use the lower honest margin.
- Offline and delayed conversions are invisible here unless you add them to the conversion and revenue figures yourself. Phone sales and long sales cycles make platform numbers understate reality, which cuts the other way from most tracking problems.
- Brand and organic effects are not separated. Some conversions credited to ads would have happened anyway. Incrementality testing answers that question; a calculator cannot.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good ROAS?
There is no universal good ROAS, and anyone who gives you one without asking your margin is guessing. The only threshold that matters is your break-even ROAS, 1 divided by your gross margin. At a 50% margin it is 2x; at 25% it is 4x; at 10% it is 10x. A good ROAS is one comfortably above your own break-even, with the comfort paying for returns, overheads and bad weeks.
Why is my ROI negative when my ROAS is above 1?
Because ROAS compares revenue with spend, and revenue is not yours to keep. At a 40% margin, a ROAS of 2x turns $2 of revenue into $0.80 of gross profit for every $1 of ads: a loss wearing a positive number. ROI on this page is calculated on profit after ad spend, so it tells the truth the ROAS hides. The worked example shows a campaign where a 4.50x ROAS is a genuine 80% ROI at one margin and a loss at another.
What is the difference between CPA and CPL?
Only the event being counted. CPA divides spend by completed actions that matter, usually sales or signups. CPL, cost per lead, divides by leads, an earlier and cheaper event. The arithmetic is identical; the honesty is in labelling which event you counted. This page says conversions: be sure your conversion is the event your break-even math assumes, because break-even CPA is meaningless against leads unless a lead’s value is worked out separately.
My conversions are higher than my clicks. Is the calculator broken?
No, and it is more common than people expect. View-through attribution credits conversions to people who saw an ad and bought later without clicking; cross-device journeys split one person into several counted clicks and one conversion somewhere else. The funnel section flags it rather than refusing it. What it does mean is that your conversion rate against clicks is overstated, and decisions should lean on CPA and profit, which are unaffected by the mismatch.
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Method: standard platform metric definitions as set out on this page; ROI calculated on profit net of ad spend; break-even figures derived from the user’s gross margin. Last reviewed: 13 October 2026.