Advertising Metrics: How to Track Impact for Sustainable Business Growth [Video]

Return on ad spend (ROAS) has become the default metric for many marketing teams. It’s clean, precise, and makes CFOs happy. Spend X dollars, get Y dollars back. Simple … right?

Not quite. Here’s the issue: The more exact a marketing metric is, the easier it is to manipulate. Want a 2x ROAS? You can get it. Want a 20x ROAS? That’s possible, too. Just toggle a few levers — increase retargeting, run more discounts, reduce spend — and watch that ROAS number climb.

The real problem is that ROAS only measures how efficiently you are at capturing existing demand — not creating new demand. It’s like fishing in an ever-shrinking pond and celebrating that you’re getting better at catching the remaining fish.

In a recent Marketing Against the Grain episode, Kieran and I discussed the solution. Don’t abandon ROAS entirely, but broaden your strategy with other measurements. That’s where the buckets modelcomes in: a framework …