ROAS Benchmarks by Industry 2026: How Brands Improve ROAS

Return on ad spend (ROAS) benchmarks reflect how much revenue businesses in your industry typically earn for every dollar spent on ads. On its own, your ROAS may be difficult to judge—3 could be strong or weak, depending on your category. ROAS benchmarks give you a reference point for judging your own ad performance, giving you context around what’s normal for a business like yours.

ROAS expectations have changed as digital advertising has become more competitive. Meta’s cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM) rose roughly 20% year over year in 2025, according to a Triple Whale analysis of 35,000 ecommerce brands. 

Ecommerce store owners have experienced these rising costs firsthand. “I think CPMs have gone up 500%. In 2014, it was $2 to reach a thousand people, and the average account on Facebook was running a 10 ROAS. Right now, most brands are happy to get to a 3, and that’s probably best in class,” says Sean Frank, CEO of the accessories brand Ridge on an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast. With costs elevated across the board, determining where your ROAS is highest can help you use your ad budget efficiently. 

Learn how ROAS benchmarks vary by industry, how to track them in Shopify, and how to set realistic goals for your business.

How to calculate ROAS

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the ratio of advertising revenue to the cost of that advertising. A ROAS of 3 indicates that your ads bring in three dollars of revenue for every one dollar spent. 

Calculate ROAS by dividing revenue attributed to a campaign by the amount spent on that campaign.

Revenue attributed to campaign / campaign ad spend = ROAS

Here’s how to read that formula:

• Revenue attributed to the campaign. This is the sales revenue associated with a specific marketing campaign. In Shopify, you can track revenue from Campaign reports. For some paid campaigns, the full data doesn’t always sync into Shopify, so you may also need to check Meta Ads Manager or Google Ads directly. 

• Campaign ad spend. This is the amount spent to run a given campaign, shown as campaign cost in Shopify, or in Meta Ads Manager or Google Ads for campaigns where Shopify doesn’t display it. 

• ROAS. This is the final ratio. If a campaign generated $3,000 in attributed revenue and cost $1,000, the ROAS is three times. 

Before measuring ROAS against any industry benchmarks, it helps to understand how those benchmark figures are calculated.

Average ROAS vs. median ROAS

Benchmark reports summarize ROAS figures into averages or medians, but the two tell different stories. 

The average ROAS sums the ROAS of all stores and divides by the total number of stores.

Sum of each store’s ROAS / number of stores = average ROAS

The median ROAS is the middle value in that set when it’s ordered from lowest to highest. 

Using averages works fine when multiple stores have similar ROAS, while the median works better when there are extreme outliers that might skew the average when pooled.

For example, say five stores report ROAS of 2, 2.5, 3, 3.5, and 14. The average is 5 (25 / 5)—but that’s brought upward by the single store with a ROAS of 14. The median is 3: line the values up in order and take the middle one. The median better represents the typical store, because it isn’t distorted by one extreme result. So when you’re looking at your own ROAS, compare against the median rather than the average.

Blended ROAS vs. platform ROAS

Blended ROAS compares total revenue to total ad spend across every channel, reflecting your whole advertising program, while individual platform ROAS shows how one channel performs on its own, such as your Google Ads ROAS or Meta Ads ROAS. 

Use platform ROAS when you’re optimizing a single channel—deciding whether to scale or cut your Google or Meta spend specifically. Use blended ROAS when you’re judging whether the whole advertising program is profitable, since it captures spillover that platform numbers miss or double-count. For instance, a Meta ad and branded search might both claim the same sale. Blended ROAS avoids that double-counting because it only divides your real total revenue by your real total spend.

Understanding ROAS benchmarks by industry

Average ROAS varies widely by category and channel. Ryze AI, which aggregates ad performance data across industries, found that on Google Ads, beauty and skin care posted the highest ROAS at around 6.1, while food and beverage sat near 3.2. Google Ads ROAS benchmarks and other ad platform ROAS benchmarks aren’t the same, because each channel reaches shoppers at a different stage. Google Ads can reach people who are actively searching for a product, while Meta Ads, for example, tend to reach them earlier, during discovery, and thus have a lower ROAS. 

The same store can see consistently higher ROAS on one channel than the other, so it usually makes sense to set a separate ROAS target for each rather than holding them to one number.

Along with your category and ad channel mix, your store’s ROAS target will depend on the following:

• Gross margin. A lower gross margin means you need more revenue from each ad dollar to stay profitable.

• Shipping costs. Covering part of the delivery costs leaves less revenue per order.

• Discounting. Discounts shrink your margin on each sale, so you need more revenue per ad dollar (a higher ROAS) just to stay profitable.

• Repeat purchase rate. Brands with a high percentage of repeat customers may accept a lower first-purchase ROAS because they expect their customers to buy again.

ROAS benchmarks by industry

• Apparel and fashion
• Beauty and skin care
• Home and furniture
• Food and beverage

Here’s how ROAS benchmarks break down across five major ecommerce categories:

Apparel and fashion

In its ROAS benchmarks report, Ryze AI found that apparel and fashion brands averaged 4.8 ROAS on Google Ads and 2.9 on Meta Ads. Billo, a user-generated content platform, found that apparel and accessories averaged 4.11 ROAS, the highest among 14 different categories in its H2 2025 Meta video ad benchmark report.

For the clothing brand Unbound Merino, a high Meta ROAS provided the confidence to scale ad spending. “Our ROAS was high, over 4—so we should just spend more,” says cofounder Dan Demsky onShopify Masters. “If we break even on the first purchase, I think that’s worth it because the customers come back.” Unbound gradually raised its Meta budget, and, according to Dan, its ROAS never dipped below 3.

Beauty and skin care

Ryze AI reported 6.1 ROAS on Google Ads and 3.2 on Meta Ads for beauty and skin care—the highest Google Ads figure of any category in its report.

“We always make sure our ROAS is at least a 2.3,” Rosie Jane Johnston, founder of the clean fragrance brand By Rosie Jane, says on Shopify Masters. “We never go below that because we can’t. That’s the thing about bootstrap and being profitable, is you have to measure it by what it’s really bringing back in.”

Your break-even ROAS is the point at which an ad’s revenue covers all your costs: the cost of goods sold (COGS)—what it costs to make or buy the product—plus shipping, discounts, payment fees, and the ad spend itself. It sets the floor for what you can spend. This matters most for smaller or bootstrapped brands, which can’t absorb upfront losses the way a better-funded competitor might.

Home and furniture

For home and garden, Ryze AI reported 4.2 ROAS on Google Ads and 2.8 on Meta Ads, while AdBacklog reported approximately 6.1 ROAS for home and furniture on Google Shopping specifically. Shipping costs and margins vary widely across furniture—a small décor piece and a large item like a sofa rarely support the same target—so it helps to set a separate ROAS target for different product groups. Before deciding whether a campaign is working, check whether the sales it brings in also cover the COGS, delivery, returns, and discounts.

Food and beverage

In the category of food and beverage, Ryze AI reported 3.2 ROAS on Google Ads and 2.1 on Meta Ads, putting it in the lower half of the site’s list of 12 ROAS benchmarks by industry.

One reason is that food and beverage orders are often smaller than orders in categories such as apparel or furniture. For example, food and beverage’s global average order value (AOV) was about $79 from July 2025 to June 2026, while fashion and apparel’s was about $233, according to data from Dynamic Yield. This means there’s less revenue from that first order to cover the cost of the ad, shipping, discounts, and the product itself.

Tips for tracking and optimizing ROAS

• Compare ROAS across marketing channels
• Use attribution models to read ROAS in context
• Review one-off purchases vs. subscriptions
• Consider the impact of returns
• Increase average order value
• Use longer attribution windows for high-consideration purchases

Use the following best practices to improve your ROAS over time:

Compare ROAS across marketing channels

Your Shopify dashboard’s top channel performance section shows your top five marketing channels, with key metrics including sales, ROAS, cost per acquisition, conversion rate, and average order value. Here you can see, for example, whether paid search, paid social, email, or another channel is driving more sales for the same ad spend.

If one channel has a higher ROAS and clears your break-even target with room to spare, consider gradually increasing its budget. If another channel has a lower ROAS, check whether its conversion rate, average order value, or customer acquisition cost is pulling down results—and whether you can address the specific weak point, like a landing page issue—before deciding to reduce your spend.

Compare results from different tools over the same date range before changing a campaign budget. For example, don’t compare this week’s Shopify ROAS with Meta’s 30-day ROAS and assume one number is wrong.

If you run Shop Campaigns—ads that appear in the Shop app and on Shop on the web—Shopify reports ROAS on its own, apart from your other campaigns, using this formula: 

ROAS = Shop Campaign sales / Shop Campaign ad spend.

Use attribution models to read ROAS in context

Most shoppers interact with several channels before buying—for example, a social media post, a Google ad, and a marketing email—which makes it difficult to determine which touchpoint gets the sale credit. A marketing attribution model decides which click earns the sale. 

Shopify lets you switch between five attribution models in its marketing reports:

• Last non-direct click. Gives 100% of credit to the last channel before purchase but excludes direct visits. This is Shopify’s default.

• Last click. Gives 100% of the credit to the final channel before purchase, including direct visits.

• First click. Gives 100% of the credit to the first channel a customer interacts with.

• Any click. Credits every channel the customer clicked, so the credited totals add up to more than your actual number of orders.

• Linear. Splits the credit evenly across every click in the journey.

Match the model to the question you’re asking, and read ROAS through that lens. For example:

• Which channel is closing the most sales? 

• How do people get introduced to my store?

• Which channel rarely closes but contributes to sales?

The last-non-direct-click model might tell you which channel is closing sales, while the first-click model might tell you which channel is bringing in new shoppers from Google Search or paid social. 

Review one-off purchases vs. subscriptions

If you have a subscription-based store, compare your ROAS for one-time purchases and subscriptions separately. A campaign with a lower first-order ROAS may still pay off if those customers reorder within a few months, but if they only buy once, the first order has to cover more of the ad cost.

Consider the impact of returns

Two campaigns with identical ROAS can be worth different amounts once returns come into play. For example, if a campaign with a ROAS of 4 sells a product with a high return rate, some of the revenue that was earned could be lost weeks later, but the original ROAS doesn’t reflect it. 

Increase average order value

Increase revenue per transaction by raising AOV with strategies such as:

• Product bundles.Bundling complementary items together increases order value without discounting products.

• Volume discounts. “Buy two, get 20% off” can increase the items per order while protecting margin.

• Free shipping thresholds. Setting a free shipping threshold above your average order value can push shoppers to buy more to qualify.

Use longer attribution windows for high-consideration purchases

Higher-priced items often involve more deliberation and tend to have longer sales cycles. A shopper may click an ad and then buy weeks later. If your attribution window is too short, the channel won’t get credited with the sale, bringing your ROAS down. Compare campaigns over the same period and use longer attribution windows to capture these delayed purchases to reflect your true ROAS.