-
Client wants MORE ROAS… currently at 1,749% (17.49x). Am I crazy?
Posted by on February 18, 2026 at 11:46 amLooking for perspective from other media buyers.
Current numbers:
- Spend: $4.3K
- Revenue: ~$75K
- ROAS: 1,749%
- 79 purchases
Performance is stable with some spikes (as you can see in the graph). Overall, very healthy return.
But the client says:
Now I’m stuck between two thoughts:
- Scale and accept lower ROAS but higher total profit
- Keep optimizing for even higher efficiency
At what point does chasing higher ROAS actually hurt growth?
Would you:
- Increase budget and allow ROAS to normalize?
- Tighten targeting to squeeze more efficiency?
- Or tell the client they’re already in an elite range?
Genuinely curious how other paid media pros handle this mindset.
Is 17x not enough?
-
1 Reply
-
Without additional context this doesn’t paint the whole picture. Obviously this is probably a very good ROAS and your client is just greedy.
If I had a client with a healthy ROAS, a good profit margin and room to scale the ads, I would definitely compile a refined business case to show them why they should increase adspend to increase their profit (while the ROAS is lower in the long run).
-
Ask you client what he wants you to optimise for.
ROAS?
Profit margin?
Or total profit?These are three totally different things to optimise for!
You’ve been doing an amazing job optimising for ROAS, but I’m guessing the client is more interested to see what remains in their bank account at the end of the month?
You can probably improve that by increasing volume with a lower ROAS… -
How is brand vs non brand roas?
-
He’s probably an ungrateful person who likes complaining just to keep you on your toes or something.
However, ROAS is a BS metric. It was invented by our colleagues to look decent or cool. But without other metrics, saying ‘look, my ROAS is 1750%’ means nothing.
What if his margin is like 20% max? That gives him $15k from that $75k revenue. Now take out TAX, shipping, refunds, fuck-ups, the TEAM, your fee. Our bro founder is barely eating from that 😅
If you want to figure it out truly, stop thinking in ROAS and you’re golden.
-
You basically need to scale until the point of diminishing returns for maximum profitability. You can run some regression models (like polynomial regression) analysis in Excel using past data.
Ad spend is the independent variable and conversion value is the dependent variable. You’re looking for the point where the curve starts to flatten or decrease. -
What are his margins? Unless its under 10%, i really dont see whats his problem is. If avg aov is about 950€ cpa is 50€, and hes not pleased, then something else is wrong, not the ads imo
-
Did he give you any context on why he wants higher ROAS?
ROAS alone doesn’t really mean anything. It’s only useful in context.
Like if 70 of those conversions came from branded keywords… that ROAS is probably actually a lot lower
And you need to understand what the profit margin is on items etc.
I think you need to ask him why he’s asking for more ROAS. Is it because he is not seeing much profit left in his bank account at the end of the month?
If that’s the case, it’s a valid concern that this ROAS number is not useful.
If he’s making a ton of money and he’s just asking for more to be greedy, then yeah it’s ridiculous lol
But don’t assume that’s the case first. Get curious about the business and his motivations.
I couldn’t see your screenshot btw so sorry if some if this was addressed there.
-
Desired/required ROAS is specific to each advertiser. A reseller for say highly competitive big ticket products where the OEM sets the price may make a very small margin. Thus they need a very high ROAS to make a decent profit.
You could look at what ROAS competitors are aiming for in the niche to get a ballpark of what’s “normal”.
And of course, some clients are just out to lunch and don’t understand about client lifetime value or are focused on keeping the lights on from a cash flow perspective… these clients can be difficult since you are very restricted.
But sure, advertisers can always take less ROAS to drive more unit sales which is often more of a new client acquisition strategy focus.
-
What industry
-
ROAS doesn’t mean that campaigns are profitable. Time to take into account profit margins. Perhaps next step could be finding a way to optimize them on profit on ad spend
-
your client wants more from a 17x return like a trust fund kid complaining the yacht isn’t big enough. scale the budget and watch them suddenly become okay with 8x roas once they see the profit number go up.
-
1749% roas on 4.3k spend means the client is leaving money on the table. thats the real conversation to have with them
the math is simple – if you scale to 10k spend and roas drops to say 800%, thats 80k revenue vs the current 75k on 4.3k. way more total profit even though the “efficiency” number looks worse
chasing higher roas at this spend level usually just means the algorithm is cherry-picking the easiest conversions and ignoring everything else. you’re basically telling google “only bid on sure things” which caps your reach
id frame it to the client as: do you want a pretty roas number or do you want more money? because at 17x you’re almost certainly not capturing all the profitable demand available. scale spend 20-30% at a time, watch the marginal roas on the incremental spend, and stop when it hits your break-even threshold
the answer to “when does chasing higher roas hurt growth” is: right now, at 17x on 4.3k spend -
If the client is profitable, then asking for higher ROAS may mean less revenue. If the client is not profitable, then they are not crazy asking for a higher ROAS.
-
lol what is your industry? I would kill for 17x ROAS
Edit: Oh this included branded KWs, gotta break those out for sure. -
what product costs $949 ?
Log in to reply.