True ROAS
Why the ROAS in your ad platform is not the ROAS in your bank account, and how we calculate ours.
Every ad platform reports a return on ad spend. Those numbers rarely agree with each other and almost never agree with your accountant. The reason is not that anyone is lying; it is that they are each measuring a different thing.
What goes wrong with platform ROAS
- It is gross. The store keeps a commission before the money reaches you, and platform ROAS is computed before that deduction.
- It ignores buyer tax. VAT and sales tax are collected from the customer and remitted; they were never yours.
- It is self-attributed. Each network claims the conversions it thinks it drove, and two networks can claim the same one.
- It is same-platform only. Ad revenue, other networks and organic income are invisible to it.
How Revenue Sensor calculates it
True ROAS is net revenue divided by total spend, over the same date range, in one currency. Net revenue is what the store paid or will pay you — after commission, and with buyer tax excluded unless you choose to include it. Total spend is every connected ad account, not just the one you are looking at.
Expect it to be lower
A true ROAS that comes in well below your platform dashboards is the normal result, and it is the number that decides whether a campaign was worth running.
The attribution caveat
Revenue Sensor joins spend and revenue on date, app and country — not on individual users. At the app and campaign level that is the right shape for a profit decision. If you need per-install attribution, that is an MMP's job, and the two views complement each other.
Currency and time zones
Ad accounts and stores report in their own currencies and their own time zones. Everything is converted to your reporting currency at the rate for the day, and days are aligned before the join. This is the other reason totals differ slightly from a platform's own dashboard.