ROAS Benchmarks Benchmarks
Industry-specific ROAS ranges across apparel, beauty, supplements, and electronics — with guidance on reading your numbers and diagnosing below-band channels.
ROAS Benchmarks
Typical Return on Ad Spend ranges by vertical: apparel 2-3x, beauty 3-4x, supplements 2-3x, high-AOV electronics 3-5x.
ROAS benchmarks describe the revenue-per-ad-euro ranges a store should expect on paid channels, segmented by vertical and average order value. They exist because absolute ROAS is meaningless without context — a 2.5x return is healthy for an apparel brand running Meta prospecting and dismal for a beauty subscription with strong repeat behaviour.
These ranges are diagnostic, not targets. They tell you whether your current ad performance sits inside the band your category supports, or whether a channel, creative, or audience is structurally underperforming and needs intervention before you scale spend.
ROAS is the simplest paid-media math there is: revenue attributed to ads divided by ad spend. The number that comes back depends almost entirely on your margin profile, average order value, and how much of your demand is already warm.
A store selling €35 t-shirts at 55% gross margin needs a very different ROAS to break even than one selling €450 cameras at 18% margin. That's why a single industry-wide "good ROAS" number doesn't exist — and why the benchmarks below are split by vertical and order-value tier.
ROAS ranges by vertical and AOV tier (Meta + Google blended, prospecting + retargeting)
| Vertical | Typical AOV | Below band | Healthy band | Top quartile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Apparel & accessories | €45-€90 | <1.8x | 2.0-3.0x | 3.5x+ |
| Beauty & skincare | €35-€70 | <2.5x | 3.0-4.0x | 5.0x+ |
| Supplements & wellness | €40-€80 | <1.8x | 2.0-3.0x | 3.5x+ |
| Home & lifestyle | €60-€150 | <2.0x | 2.5-3.5x | 4.5x+ |
| Electronics (high AOV) | €250-€800 | <2.5x | 3.0-5.0x | 6.0x+ |
| Footwear | €80-€140 | <2.0x | 2.5-3.5x | 4.0x+ |
| Jewellery & watches | €120-€400 | <2.5x | 3.0-4.5x | 5.5x+ |
The bands above are blended across prospecting and retargeting. If you split them out, retargeting typically runs 2-3x higher than prospecting — a healthy Meta retargeting campaign in beauty often clears 8-10x while prospecting stays at 2.5-3x. Judging your prospecting campaigns against a blended benchmark is one of the most common reasons teams pause ads that were actually working.
Healthy ROAS midpoints by vertical
How to read your ROAS against these bands
Before comparing your numbers, normalise three things: attribution window, channel mix, and new-vs-returning customer split. A 7-day-click ROAS in Meta will look 30-50% lower than the 28-day-click view many benchmark reports quote, and a retargeting-heavy account will overstate efficiency against a prospecting-led peer.
The more useful metric for most stores is contribution-margin ROAS or MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio: total revenue / total ad spend). MER strips out attribution noise and tells you whether ads are actually paying for themselves at the P&L level — which is what your CFO is measuring you against.
iOS 14.5 and the post-attribution era
Platform-reported ROAS has been systematically under-counting since iOS 14.5 — typically 15-30% lower than true blended ROAS for Meta-heavy accounts. If your in-platform ROAS sits at the bottom of the band but MER is healthy, you're probably fine. If both are below band, you have a real channel problem.
What to do when ROAS is below band
Below-band ROAS is almost always one of three things: a creative-fatigue problem (CTR has dropped 30%+ over four weeks), an audience-saturation problem (frequency above 3.0 on prospecting), or a landing-page problem (click-through is fine but post-click conversion rate is half your site average). Diagnose in that order — it's the fastest path to the actual cause.
If creative and audience check out, the answer usually sits on the page. Heatmap the top-spend landing page, look at scroll depth on mobile, and check whether the product the ad promised is the one the page actually leads with. A €0.80 CPC dropping into a page with 1.2% conversion will never produce a band-healthy ROAS no matter how much you optimise the ad account.
ROAS benchmarks: frequently asked questions
It depends on your vertical and margin. For most Shopify stores in apparel, supplements, and home, a blended 2.5-3.5x is healthy. Beauty and high-AOV electronics should target 3-5x. Below 2x for any vertical signals either creative or landing-page issues.
MER (total revenue / total ad spend) is more reliable as your north-star because it isn't distorted by attribution windows or platform reporting changes. Use channel-level ROAS for tactical decisions inside ad accounts, and MER for the strategic question of whether paid is profitable overall.
Google captures more intent-driven search demand that would convert anyway, so reported ROAS skews higher. Meta does more upper-funnel demand generation that takes longer to attribute. A 2:1 ratio between Google and Meta ROAS is normal and not a sign Meta is broken.
Higher AOV usually means lower percentage margin and higher CAC tolerance, so target ROAS shifts. A €500 electronics order at 20% margin needs a different ROAS to break even than a €60 supplement at 70% margin. Always set your floor as 1 / (gross margin %).
Break-even ROAS is 1 divided by your gross margin. A 50% margin business breaks even at 2.0x ROAS; a 25% margin business needs 4.0x. Anything above break-even contributes to fixed costs and profit; anything below loses money on every order.
Yes — always. Retargeting harvests demand you already generated, so its ROAS reflects existing intent, not incremental performance. Healthy retargeting often runs 2-3x higher than prospecting. Judging them blended will lead you to over-invest in retargeting and starve top-of-funnel.
At least 7-14 days and 50+ purchase conversions. Anything shorter is noise — daily ROAS swings of 30-50% are normal even on stable campaigns. For high-AOV verticals with fewer daily conversions, extend the window to 21 days before drawing conclusions.
Platform-reported ROAS in Meta dropped 15-30% on average because Apple's App Tracking Transparency stopped Meta from observing many post-click conversions. True ROAS often didn't change much; reported ROAS did. Triangulate with MER and a GA4-based check.
Yes — multi-market stores typically see lower blended ROAS because localisation, FX, and shipping costs compress margins on secondary markets. Benchmark each market separately against local competitors rather than your home-market numbers.
In order of impact: fix landing-page conversion rate (usually 20-40% lift available), refresh creatives every 2-3 weeks before fatigue hits, exclude buyers from prospecting audiences, and tighten product-feed quality on Google Shopping. Cutting spend is the last lever, not the first.
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