See which ad platforms are actually profitable and which are quietly eating your budget for applause — by entering spend, revenue, and conversions for each.
You know your total ad spend down to the dollar. Ask which platform earned it back, though, and the room goes quiet. There's almost always one channel carrying the whole operation and one channel spending your money for polite applause — and from inside the dashboard they look identical. This optimizer pulls them apart. Feed it your monthly spend, revenue, and conversions per platform and it hands back ROAS, cost per acquisition, and a blunt one-word verdict for each: Excellent, Good, Break-Even, or Losing. No more averaging your winner and your dead weight into one comfortable number.
The blended ROAS across all platforms sits at the top of the dashboard so you can see the whole picture at once. Below it, the platform table shows the story behind that number — usually one or two channels carrying the weight and one or two pulling it down. Knowing which is which is the first step to spending the same budget and getting more back.
What ROAS actually tells you (and what it misses)
ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend. A ROAS of 3.0x means every dollar you put into ads returns $3.00 in revenue. That sounds healthy until you factor in the cost of the product or service being sold. A creator selling a $50 digital product with $30 in delivery costs and $8 in ad cost per sale has a ROAS of 6.25x — and a profit margin of $12 per sale. A ROAS of 1.8x on a $200 product with $40 in delivery costs might actually be more profitable.
The tool accounts for this by letting you enter an Average Product Cost (COGS) and a Marketplace Fee percentage alongside your spend and revenue. That changes the Verdict from a ROAS-only judgment to a real profitability signal. A platform showing 2.2x ROAS might be green or red depending on what the product actually costs to fulfill.
For most creators and small-shop operators, ROAS of 2x or above tends to be at least break-even once margins are loaded in. ROAS of 4x or above is the zone where scaling usually makes sense. Below 1x, you are paying for the privilege of making sales.
Reading the platform verdict and acting on it
Each platform row in the table gets a verdict label based on its ROAS: Excellent (4x+), Good (2–4x), Break-Even (1–2x), or Losing (below 1x). The goal is not to eliminate every platform below Excellent — sometimes a Break-Even channel drives brand awareness or email signups that convert later. The goal is to make the trade-off visible so you are choosing it consciously.
The scenario comparison view runs three budget strategies automatically: Current Mix, Scale Winners, and Cut Losers. Scale Winners doubles the spend on your highest-ROAS platform. Cut Losers pulls budget from platforms below break-even and reallocates to the top performer. The projected revenue difference between these scenarios is often surprising. A creator spending $400 across four platforms might find that consolidating to $400 on the top two adds $300 per month in revenue without spending another dollar.
Use the ROAS bars at the bottom of the calculator view to see which platform is the biggest outlier in either direction. That is usually where the next budget decision lives.
Setting a revenue goal and working backward
The Goal view flips the question. Instead of asking what your current spend produces, you tell the tool what monthly revenue you need and what ROAS you plan to target. It returns the required ad spend, the number of expected conversions, and a daily budget you can actually plug into your ad account.
The Revenue Milestones table extends this out across four revenue targets — $5,000, $10,000, $25,000, and $50,000 per month — showing the required spend and daily budget for each. This is useful for planning a scale-up. If you need $50,000 a month in ad-attributed revenue at a 3x target ROAS, the tool shows you need about $16,700 in monthly spend before you have had a single conversation with an agency or media buyer.
The bulk campaign view for multi-campaign accounts
The Bulk tab lets you analyze multiple campaigns within a single platform — not just platforms versus each other. Each row takes a campaign name, spend, revenue, and conversions and returns ROAS, cost per sale, and a verdict. This is useful for anyone running several ad sets or product campaigns under one account.
Sort by ROAS to find the bottom 20% of campaigns that are consuming budget without producing. Those are usually the first to pause. Sort by cost per sale to find campaigns where you are paying the most per customer — often worth refining the audience or creative before pausing entirely.
Common patterns that show up in the data
A few situations come up repeatedly when creators run their numbers through this tool. First, ad spend on one platform looks good until COGS are loaded in, and the verdict flips from Good to Break-Even. This is why entering product cost matters. Second, CPA rises slowly over months as audiences saturate, but because ROAS is still technically above 1x, no one cuts the spend. The platform-by-platform view makes the trajectory visible before the trend becomes a problem.
Third, many operators discover they have been splitting budget across four or five platforms out of habit rather than data. Two platforms tend to do the actual work. The other three are consuming 30 to 40% of budget for 10% of revenue. Cutting them is almost always the right call.
Run your real mix through it before the next budget cycle locks in — you may find $300 a month hiding in a reallocation you've been too busy to notice. Sign up free to save your scenarios and watch them month over month, because the trend is where the money actually is, not any single snapshot.
How to use it
- Edit the platform rows in the table: enter the Platform name, Monthly Spend, Revenue from Ads, and Conversions for each channel you are running.
- Add your Average Product Cost (COGS) and Marketplace Fee % so the profitability verdict accounts for your actual margins, not just top-line ROAS.
- Read the Blended ROAS KPI at the top and the per-platform Verdict column to see which channels are earning their budget.
- Open the Scenario view to compare your Current Mix against a Scale Winners or Cut Losers reallocation — the projected revenue difference is displayed as a dollar amount.
- Use the Goal view to enter a monthly revenue target and get back the required spend, expected conversions, and daily budget at your current ROAS.
Who it's for
- Etsy seller running Pinterest and Facebook ads simultaneously — Pinterest shows 4.1x ROAS, Facebook shows 1.2x — the optimizer suggests moving $200/month from Facebook to Pinterest, projecting $340 more in monthly ad revenue with no budget increase.
- Digital course creator scaling from $500 to $2,000 ad spend — Uses the Goal view to find that hitting $8,000/month in ad-attributed course sales at a 3.5x ROAS requires $2,286 in monthly spend — uses this to set a realistic scale-up timeline.
- Freelancer testing Google versus Instagram ads for lead gen — Enters 30 conversions at $15 CPA on Google versus 18 conversions at $28 CPA on Instagram — verdict shows Google as the clear winner, so she pauses Instagram and concentrates the budget.
- Shop owner reviewing six ad campaigns in a single account — Uses the Bulk tab to find that three campaigns produce 80% of revenue while consuming 45% of spend — the other three have ROAS under 1.5x and get paused immediately.
Key terms
- ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)
- Revenue generated divided by ad spend. A ROAS of 3x means every dollar spent on ads produced $3 in revenue, before accounting for product or fulfillment costs.
- CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
- Total ad spend divided by number of conversions. Tells you what you paid on average to acquire each customer or lead.
- Blended ROAS
- The combined ROAS across all ad platforms, weighted by spend. Masks platform-level differences that are often where the real optimization opportunity lives.
- COGS (Cost of Goods Sold)
- The direct cost to produce or deliver the product being sold. Including COGS converts a revenue-based ROAS into a true profitability signal.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good ROAS for a small creator or shop?
It depends on your margins. With physical products at 30 to 40% gross margin, a 3x ROAS is typically the minimum to be profitable after ad costs. Digital products with near-100% margin can be profitable at 1.5x ROAS. Enter your COGS into the tool to get a verdict that reflects your actual numbers.
What counts as a Conversion for this tool?
Whatever action you are optimizing for — a purchase, a lead form submit, an email signup. Be consistent across platforms. Comparing purchase conversions on one platform to lead conversions on another will produce a misleading CPA comparison.
My blended ROAS looks good but I am not profitable. Why?
ROAS measures revenue returned per dollar spent on ads, but does not subtract product costs, delivery costs, or platform fees. A 3x ROAS on a product with 60% COGS is actually a losing proposition. Load your product cost and marketplace fee into the tool to see the real picture.
How often should I check these numbers?
Monthly is the minimum. Weekly makes sense for campaigns spending $500 or more per week, because trends that develop over a few weeks can be corrected early. Monthly is fine for lower-spend accounts where the data takes time to accumulate.