Steer on profit, not on revenue.
With POAS (Profit on Ad Spend) you see the real profitability of every campaign, ad and product. We set it up for you, so the algorithms of Google and Meta bid on profit instead of bare revenue.
- Profit per order, not per click. POAS accounts for every cost: cost of goods, shipping, payment fees, discounts and returns. At last you see what a campaign actually delivers.
- Break-even is always 1. No more inflated ROAS targets you have to guess at. Anything above a POAS of 1 is profit, clear and transparent.
- Set up by specialists. We implement POAS with ProfitMetrics and connect it to your bidding strategy on Google and Meta.
ROAS versus POAS.
For years, ROAS was seen as the best measure of success. Not because it's the most accurate, but because revenue and ad spend happen to be easy to get hold of. POAS looks at what you actually keep.
ROAS
Revenue / ad spend
- Based on revenue, not profit
- Takes no account of your costs and margins
- Break-even differs per product and is hard to pin down
- Not transparent: a good-looking ROAS can still be losing money
POAS
Gross profit / ad spend
- Based on gross profit per order
- Cost of goods, shipping, payment fees, discounts and returns all count
- Break-even is always 1; anything above that is profit
- Fully transparent, right down to product and search term level
What is POAS?
POAS stands for Profit on Ad Spend and shows the real profitability of every campaign, ad, search term and product. Where ROAS stops at revenue, POAS accounts for all your costs, so you see what's left at the bottom line.
Switch on POAS bidding and you steer Google's and Meta's algorithms to spend more on the orders that actually make a profit, and less on the ones costing you money. You scale on profit, not on revenue.
Revenue doesn't tell the whole story.
What do you do with shipping costs, payment fees or margins that swing wildly? A product with high revenue can still cost you money on balance. And in some sectors, a large share of orders come back as returns.
POAS accounts for the real cost of doing business and shows the profit per campaign, product and search term. That lets you steer and scale your ad budget on your real goal: profit.
From product level to company level.
Product level and buckets
With Performance Max, a target is often hit through the average of all your products, which can send half your budget to unprofitable ones. We split your products into profitable and unprofitable buckets, so Google bids high and low on the right products.
Campaign and ad group level
You see the average POAS of all your campaigns in real time, in a custom column in Google Ads and Meta. You zoom in to campaign, ad group and even individual product level, and steer your budget to where it earns the most.
Company-level dashboard
A real-time dashboard brings your performance back to the core numbers: contribution margin, blended POAS, POAS on new customers and profit across the full customer lifetime. That way you steer your entire company from one overview.
This is how your profit finds its way back into your ads.
We connect your real margins and returns to your ad accounts, so the platforms learn to bid on profit per order.
- 1Order
- 2Costs and returns accounted for
- 3Net profit per order
- 4POAS fed back to Google and Meta
Tools and platforms we work with
Frequently asked questions.
Roughly what budget do I need?
The setup is a defined project, usually with ProfitMetrics as the tool that runs alongside it every month. It typically pays for itself quickly, because your ad budget goes to the genuinely profitable orders instead of revenue that delivers nothing.
How quickly can I expect results?
The connection is usually live within a few weeks. After that, the ad platforms need time to learn to bid on profit, after which your return improves noticeably. You get the insight into your real profitability almost immediately.
What's the difference with regular ROAS?
ROAS divides your revenue by your ad spend, so it says nothing about your margins. POAS divides your gross profit by your ad spend, with all costs and returns accounted for. With POAS, break-even is always 1, and anything above that is profit.
Do I need ProfitMetrics?
For POAS, we like to work with ProfitMetrics, because it reliably processes your margins and costs and feeds them back cleanly to Google and Meta. We set it up fully for you and connect it to your bidding strategy.
Does this work with my webshop?
In most cases, yes. We work a lot with Shopify, but we also connect other platforms, as long as your margin and cost data is available. In a conversation, we quickly check whether your setup is suitable.
What clients say.
B2B SaaS“Binnen een week hadden we een nieuwe site staan. Bij ons vorige bureau mochten we keurig drie weken wachten op een eerste mockup.”
E-commerce“Slimme jongens. En verrassend leuk om mee te werken. Dat krijg je niet vaak in dit vak.”
Also worth a look: steer on value across the whole customer relationship.
POAS looks at profit per order. Want to take it a step further and steer on what a customer is worth across the whole relationship? Customer Lifetime Tracking is the logical next step.
View Customer Lifetime TrackingWant to know what you actually keep from your ads?
Book a no-obligation intro call. We'll look at your webshop and your margins and show you where profit is being left on the table.
