Data-driven Marketing: ROAS vs. ROI

A common mistake is equating conversion value with a company’s actual revenue. ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) is a powerful optimization signal for Google Ads algorithms, but by nature it is a relatively “shallow” metric.

If a campaign generates PLN 50,000 in revenue at a cost of PLN 10,000, a ROAS of 5.0 looks excellent in a report. However, this metric has no visibility into margins, logistics costs, returns, or taxes. A high Google Ads ROAS combined with low margins may mean that each additional sale brings the business closer to a loss rather than to profit.

While ROAS measures the efficiency of advertising spend, ROI (Return on Investment) measures the actual profitability of the investment. This is a metric that rarely appears on agency dashboards, as it requires going beyond the Google Ads interface.

Currently, data-driven attribution is the standard. It is important to recognize that changing the attribution model does not alter reality—it only changes how we interpret the contribution of each channel.

Moreover, with the advent of Consent Mode v2, ROAS is increasingly becoming an estimated metric. Decision-makers must accept that marketing is no longer a game of 100% data precision, but of managing trends and probabilities. Comparing performance over time without accounting for data gaps caused by user consent restrictions carries a high risk of misinterpretation.

This is one of the most common questions: why do the data differ?

Google Ads functions as an execution engine. ROAS is used here to “feed” automated bidding strategies.

Google Analytics 4, on the other hand, is a contextual tool. It enables assessment of the full customer journey and comparison across channels.

Reporting discrepancies are not errors—they reflect two different perspectives on the same business. GA4 should be used for strategic analysis, while Google Ads is for ongoing technical optimization.

The goal of modern marketing is not to generate “any” revenue. The goal is to build profitable scale. At Delante, we help move away from the “more content, more clicks” paradigm toward smarter, data-driven decision-making.

If your current ROAS is high but you feel it isn’t translating into real business profitability, it’s time to stop optimizing solely for the algorithm and start optimizing for the business. True success is not the highest bar in the dashboard – it’s a stable ROI that enables safe, scalable growth of your brand in global markets.