ROAS, or Return on Ad Spend, is the ratio of revenue an advertising campaign generated to the money spent on it. It is the metric most marketplaces outside Amazon lead with: Flipkart Ads, Myntra, Blinkit and Zepto seller dashboards all report ROAS, and Amazon shows it alongside ACoS. A ROAS of 4 (sometimes written 4x or 400%) means each rupee of ad spend brought back four rupees in sales.
How ROAS is calculated
ROAS = ad-attributed sales ÷ ad spend. Amazon's guide describes it as the inverse of ACoS: ACoS = 1 ÷ ROAS × 100.
Worked example: a kurta seller spends ₹25,000 on Flipkart Product Listing Ads in a week and the campaign attributes ₹1,00,000 in sales. ROAS = 1,00,000 ÷ 25,000 = 4. The same campaign on Amazon would display an ACoS of 25%. Quick conversions: ROAS 2 = ACoS 50%; ROAS 5 = ACoS 20%; ROAS 10 = ACoS 10%.
Be careful with what each platform counts as "sales". Amazon uses 7-day attributed sales for Sponsored Products and 14-day for Sponsored Brands and Display as of September 2026. Flipkart reports direct and indirect units within its own window. Comparing ROAS across marketplaces without checking the attribution rules leads to bad budget decisions. Also check whether the platform reports sales before or after returns; on Flipkart and Myntra, where return rates in fashion can exceed 20%, a headline ROAS of 4 may be closer to 3 once RTO and returns are removed.
What a good ROAS looks like
The only honest answer is "above break-even". Break-even ROAS = 1 ÷ margin. If a product keeps 30% after marketplace fees and product cost, break-even ROAS is 1 ÷ 0.30 = 3.33. Anything above 3.33 is profitable per sale; below it, the ad is subsidised by margin. Low-priced, high-fee categories such as accessories often need a ROAS of 5 or more; premium items with 50% margin can run profitably at 2.
ROAS says nothing about volume. A campaign with a ROAS of 12 on ₹500 spend is less useful than one with a ROAS of 4 on ₹50,000. Judge it together with total sales and, on Amazon, TACoS.
How to improve ROAS
- Move budget towards exact-match winners. Search term reports on Amazon and Flipkart show which queries convert; give them their own campaigns and bids.
- Add negative keywords weekly so broad and automatic campaigns stop paying for irrelevant clicks.
- Raise average order value. Bundles, multipacks and virtual bundles increase revenue per click without changing the bid.
- Improve conversion rate. Better images, price competitiveness and reviews raise ROAS more reliably than bid tweaks.
- Use dayparting where the platform allows it and pause hours that spend without converting.
Blooprint sets break-even ROAS per SKU before touching bids under marketplace ads management. See the Flipkart ads guide for how Flipkart reports it.