Profit ROASAcquisitionLive
The ROAS that counts
the costs behind the order.
Every channel measured against the return it needs to break even after VAT, goods, shipping, packaging and fees — so a busy ad account and a profitable one stop being the same thing.
Measured, not estimated EU-hosted Read-only by default
01 / The case for it
Revenue ROAS counts money that was never yours.
Without it
An ad platform divides attributed revenue by spend and reports a number. That revenue still owes the tax inside it and the cost of the goods it sold — so a campaign can clear 3× on the dashboard and lose money in the accounts.
What Profflow does
Measured against what the advertising has to come out of.
Advertising is paid for out of contribution — what is left after tax and the cost of goods — not out of the headline. That is the figure Profflow divides by, which is why it and the ad platform disagree.
02 / What it looks like
What each channel has to clear
Meta4.8×Clears it — €1 back for every €4.19 needed, and then some
Google4.3×Just above the line; worth watching rather than scaling
TikTok prospecting3.6×Below break-even. Busy, and quietly losing money
The upright mark is break-even: 4.19×. Anything left of it is spending more than it brings back.
Break-even is worked from the margin of what each channel actually sells, so it is not the same line for everybody. Two of these channels are busy. One of them is paying for itself.
The ad platform sees £7,940 to divide by. The business has £4,408. Only one of those two numbers can honestly tell you to spend more.
03 / Worth understanding
The number an ad platform will never show you
ROAS is measured against revenue, and revenue is not yours
A 4× return sounds decisive until you take out the VAT inside the price, the goods, the shipping and the payment fee. What is left decides whether the campaign made money, and the ad platform has never seen any of those numbers.
Break-even is per channel, not per account
Channels sell different products at different margins. One break-even figure for the whole account hides the campaign that sells your thinnest-margin product and looks fine on a blended chart.
Attributed revenue is a claim, not a measurement
Meta and Google both count the same order. Profflow reports what each platform claims, plainly labelled, and measures the channel against contribution — it does not add the claims together and call the total revenue.
04 / What it is built from
Profit ROAS is assembled
from accounts you already run.
01Channel spend02Attributed revenue03Contribution margin04Payment fees05Cost of goods06VAT
Profit ROAS
Break-even after all costsProfit ROAS, not grossChannel winners and losersMeasured spend05 / How it is worked out
From the account
to the figure on the screen.
- 01ReadsSpend and attributed revenue per channel.
- 02ComputesThe break-even return from all of your variable costs, not COGS alone.
- 03RanksWinners and losers against that line.
- 04PreparesThe next budget move, with the maths attached.
Asked of the figures
Which channels are actually paying for themselves?
After every variable cost, £1 of spend has to return £4.19 in sales to break even. Meta clears it; one prospecting campaign returns £3.60 and is quietly losing money.
How Profflow reasons06 / What it lets you do
What follows
from getting Profit ROAS right.
Break-even after all costs
The return each euro of spend needs once VAT, goods, shipping and fees are paid.
Profit ROAS, not gross
Acquisition measured against contribution, not attributed revenue.
Channel winners and losers
Rank every channel against the line it has to clear.
Measured spend
Uses the spend posted by the ad account where it is connected.
Blended and per-channel
See the whole picture and each source without mixing them.
The next budget move
A spend decision with the maths attached, not a guess.
07 / How the figure is kept honest
The same four rules,
on every screen.
Profflow observes the accounts it is connected to. It does not write an order, a price, a campaign or a payout back to any of them.
A charge read from an account is labelled measured. Anything modelled — a forecast, a projection, a filled gap — is labelled as such on the screen it appears on.
Follow any number to the dated rows underneath it. A figure nobody can check is a figure nobody acts on.
The product prepares a decision and shows the evidence. Nothing consequential happens until you say so.
Questions
About Profit ROAS.
- Why is break-even ROAS so high?
- Because VAT, cost of goods, shipping, packaging and fees all come out of the same euro before it pays for advertising. A line drawn from COGS alone sits far too low.
- Is ad spend measured or typed?
- Measured where an ad account is connected; typed figures are used until then and are labelled as such.
- Does it claim perfect attribution?
- No. Attributed revenue and business contribution are different signals and stay distinct.
- Which channels are supported?
- The model works from spend and attributed revenue per channel; connected ad accounts add measured daily spend.
One operating system
The rest of the picture,
one view away.
Each part is useful on its own. Profflow holds them in one model, so a figure here carries the context from everywhere else.
See the whole productSee Profit ROAS on your own figures.
Every channel measured against the return it needs to break even after VAT, goods, shipping, packaging and fees — so a busy ad account and a profitable one stop being the same thing.