Sponsored Display looks cheap until view-through attribution inflates the numbers. Enter your spend, attributed sales, view-through share, and margin. Get the true ROI with view-through discounted, plus a scale, hold, or kill verdict.
True ROAS · incremental profit · verdict
This model treats view-through sales as non-incremental, the conservative default. If you have proof some view-through buyers were truly new, adjust the view-through share down.
Want this breakdown in your inbox, plus the view-through share where this campaign flips to profitable?
Sponsored Display reports a fat ROAS and sellers scale it without a second thought. Here is what the report hides. A big chunk of those sales are view-through, credited to a shopper who saw the ad, never clicked, and bought later. Many of those people were coming back anyway.
So the campaign takes credit for sales it did not cause. When you strip out the view-through and count only the clicks that actually cost you money, the real return is often a fraction of the reported number. Sometimes it is negative, and the seller has been paying for sales they already owned.
This calculator discounts the view-through, applies your margin, and shows the profit you can actually bank.
Spend, attributed sales, view-through share, and your margin. All from the campaign report.
We keep only click-driven sales, apply your margin, and compare the profit against your spend.
Scale, hold, or kill, based on true ROAS and the incremental profit left after margin.
It counts view-through sales, meaning a shopper who saw the ad but did not click still gets credited if they buy later. Many of those buyers would have purchased anyway, so the reported ROAS is inflated. This calculator discounts the view-through to show the ROI you can bank.
A good true ROAS clears the break-even line set by your margin. At a 30 percent margin you need a true ROAS above about 3.3 to profit, because each sale returns only 30 cents of margin per dollar. Below that break-even line the retargeting spends more than it brings back.
Scale when true incremental profit is positive and comfortably above break-even. Hold when it is barely positive and worth watching. Kill when discounting the view-through pushes incremental profit negative, because the campaign rides on sales you would have won for free.
Yes. Run it as many times as you want with no account. Drop your email only if you want the breakdown sent to your inbox.
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