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Guide

How to Measure Your True ROAS

True ROAS is the return after you strip out the conversions your channels claimed but did not cause. It is the number worth budgeting on, and it is almost never the one on the dashboard. Here is what it means and how to measure it.

By , Founder & CEOUpdated

Why reported ROAS overstates returns

Dashboards credit would-have-happened-anyway conversions, double-count across platforms, and lean on tracking that privacy changes have degraded. The result reliably flatters paid channels, especially retargeting and branded demand.

How to measure true ROAS

Estimate each channel's incremental contribution causally and divide by spend. That gives true (incremental) ROAS: the return on sales the channel caused. No pixel required - your Shopify + GA4 history is enough to estimate what each channel caused.

Frequently asked questions

  • Is true ROAS the same as incremental ROAS?
    Yes - both mean return on caused sales, not credited sales.
  • Why is mine lower than the dashboard?
    Because the dashboard counts non-incremental conversions.

The pillar this guide links up to: Causal Attribution

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