Break-Even ROAS: How to Calculate It and Why It Matters
Learn how to calculate break-even ROAS and break-even CPA for your ecommerce store, with worked examples and how to use them to make ad decisions.
September 2, 2026 · 3 min readKey takeaways
- Track a small set of metrics consistently.
- Profit metrics matter more than revenue alone.
- Review trends weekly, not single days.
You cannot improve what you do not measure, but tracking too many numbers creates noise. These ten KPIs give founders a clear, weekly view of business health.
| KPI | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Revenue | Top-line growth and seasonality |
| Orders | Volume, separate from price changes |
| Conversion rate | How well your store turns visitors into buyers |
| Average order value (AOV) | Impact of pricing, bundles and upsells |
| Customer acquisition cost (CAC) | What it costs to win a new customer |
| Marketing efficiency ratio (MER) | Total revenue ÷ total marketing spend |
| Contribution margin | Profit after variable costs and marketing |
| Repeat purchase rate | Customer loyalty and product satisfaction |
| Refund and return rate | Product quality and expectation gaps |
| Cash position | Runway to fund inventory and growth |
How to use these KPIs
- Look at week-over-week and month-over-month trends rather than single days
- Investigate any metric that moves sharply, positive or negative
- Connect each metric to an owner and an action
Our Scale package includes an analytics dashboard built around these metrics. See pricing.
This article is for general information only. See our Disclaimer.