ROAS Benchmarks by Industry: What to Expect in 2026

The average ecommerce ROAS dropped to 2.87x in 2025 — down 4% year over year. If your campaigns are returning less than they did a year ago, you're not alone. Rising CPMs, increased competition, and platform algorithm shifts have compressed returns across nearly every vertical.

This article goes beyond the general question of what counts as a good ROAS. Here, you'll find hard numbers broken down by industry, platform, campaign type, and season — sourced from Triple Whale's analysis of 35,000+ brands, First Page Sage's multi-year campaign data, Focus Digital's platform benchmarks, and Varos market research.

If you need a refresher on what ROAS is or how to calculate it, start there first. This guide assumes you already know the basics.

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ROAS by industry: the centerpiece table

The median ecommerce ROAS across all verticals is 2.87x. But that average hides massive variation. Automotive brands earn 2.54x on Meta alone, while media and publishing brands struggle to clear 1.17x on the same platform.

Here's how industries stack up across the two largest paid social and search platforms, based on 2025 full-year performance data:

Industry	Meta Ads ROAS	Google Ads ROAS	Blended ROAS
Automotive	2.54	3.85	4.30
Fashion & Apparel	2.18	3.40	4.50
Home & Garden	2.18	3.80	6.70
Sports & Outdoors	2.28	3.20	2.85
Baby Products	2.17	3.50	3.80
Travel & Luggage	2.25	4.30	2.81
Jewelry & Accessories	2.10	3.10	4.00
Beauty & Personal Care	1.57	2.80	2.82
Electronics	1.92	3.02	3.02
Food & Beverage	1.56	2.60	3.40
Pets & Animals	1.58	2.84	2.50
Health & Wellness	1.50	2.12	2.30
Books & Music	1.65	2.40	1.78
Media & Publishing	1.17	1.80	1.25

Data sources: Triple Whale (35,000+ brands, full-year 2025), Focus Digital (2025 median data), Upcounting ecommerce report (2025)

A few patterns stand out.

Home & Garden's blended ROAS of 6.70 is the standout. High average order values and strong repeat purchase behavior drive those numbers. These brands also tend to run heavy Google Shopping campaigns, which inflate the blended figure relative to social-only performance.

Beauty's Meta ROAS of 1.57 looks weak, but context matters. Beauty brands often run aggressive prospecting campaigns on Meta — spending heavily on cold audiences to build brand awareness. Their retargeting ROAS on Meta sits closer to 3.50, and social ROAS jumped to 3.50 in Q1 2025 after post-holiday lows.

Media & Publishing is the hardest vertical for paid advertising. Low average order values and high churn rates make it difficult to generate positive returns on ad spend. Subscription-based publishers fare better than one-off content sellers.

None of these numbers mean much in isolation. Your actual target depends on your gross margins — run the math through the break-even ROAS calculator to find the floor that keeps your campaigns profitable.

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Meta Ads ROAS benchmarks (Facebook & Instagram)

The overall Meta Ads ROAS across all industries averaged 1.86x in 2025, up a modest 1.29% year over year. That platform-wide number masks significant industry variation.

Meta ROAS by industry with year-over-year trends

Industry	2025 ROAS	YoY Change
Automotive	2.54	+1.66%
Sports & Outdoors	2.28	+3.77%
Travel Accessories & Luggage	2.25	-0.81%
Apparel & Accessories	2.18	+3.90%
Home & Garden	2.18	+7.04%
Baby	2.17	+1.63%
Toys, Art & Collectibles	1.93	+2.70%
Lifestyle & Boutique	1.93	+2.70%
Electronics	1.92	+1.46%
Books & Music	1.65	+2.81%
Pets & Animals	1.58	+7.07%
Beauty	1.57	-1.07%
Food & Beverage	1.56	+7.17%
Health & Wellness	1.50	-2.78%
Media & Publishing	1.17	-2.22%

Data source: Triple Whale, 35,000+ brands, January–December 2025

The biggest winners in 2025 were Food & Beverage (+7.17%), Pets & Animals (+7.07%), and Home & Garden (+7.04%). These categories benefited from improved creative formats — particularly Advantage+ Shopping campaigns, which automate audience targeting and tend to find efficient pockets of demand that manual campaigns miss.

The losers were Health & Wellness (-2.78%), Media & Publishing (-2.22%), and Beauty (-1.07%). Health & Wellness faced increasing regulatory pressure on ad claims, which limited targeting options and increased disapproval rates.

Meta ROAS by campaign objective

Campaign type dramatically affects your return. Sales-optimized campaigns on Meta generate 835% higher returns than traffic campaigns.

Campaign Objective	Median ROAS	Range
Sales / Conversions	4.87	1.52 – 8.07
Engagement	0.70	0.12 – 2.16
Traffic	0.52	0.16 – 1.93

Data source: Focus Digital, April 2025

If you're running traffic campaigns and wondering why your ROAS is low, this is your answer. Traffic campaigns optimize for clicks, not purchases. The algorithm finds people who click — not people who buy. Switch to a sales-optimized objective and your ROAS should improve substantially.

Meta ROAS by targeting strategy

Targeting Type	Median ROAS	Range
Retargeting	3.61	1.73 – 7.52
Prospecting	2.11	1.14 – 4.07
Lookalike	1.80	0.78 – 4.74

Data source: Focus Digital, April 2025

Retargeting delivers 71% higher returns than prospecting — but you can't scale a business on retargeting alone. Your retargeting pool is capped by the size of your prospecting funnel. If your blended Meta ROAS looks good but your prospecting ROAS is declining, you have a growth ceiling forming.

A common mistake: comparing your blended Meta ROAS to someone else's prospecting-only number. That comparison is meaningless. Always segment your reporting by funnel stage.

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Google Ads ROAS benchmarks

Google Ads delivers the highest median ROAS of any major platform at 3.52x — but that headline number dropped 10% in 2025. Costs climbed across 87% of industries while conversion rates improved in only 65% of them. More advertisers paid more and got less.

Google Ads ROAS by campaign type

The gap between campaign types on Google is enormous. Search campaigns return 43x what display campaigns do.

Campaign Type	Median ROAS	Range
Search	5.17	2.24 – 11.09
Shopping	2.88	1.62 – 5.11
Performance Max	2.57	1.53 – 4.59
Smart	1.72	1.72 – 2.47
Video	0.52	0.06 – 1.28
Display	0.12	0.00 – 0.80

Data source: Focus Digital, 2025 median data

Search at 5.17x makes sense — users typing product queries have high purchase intent. That's not a creative win, it's an intent win.

Performance Max at 2.57x looks solid until you realize PMax often cannibalizes brand search traffic. A study by Adalysis covering 3,300 campaigns found that Search campaigns had higher conversion rates when both PMax and Search were eligible for the same queries. If you're running PMax without brand exclusions, your true incremental ROAS is likely lower than reported.

Display at 0.12x should not be evaluated on direct ROAS at all. Display is an awareness channel. Measuring it by last-click ROAS is like judging a billboard by how many people walk into your store within 30 seconds of seeing it.

If you use target ROAS bidding on Google Ads, set different targets for each campaign type. A single target across Search and Display will either starve your Display reach or overspend on Search.

Google Ads ROAS by industry

Industry	2025 ROAS	YoY Change
Travel & Luggage	4.30	-21.10%
Legal Services	4.21	—
Automotive	3.85	—
Healthcare & Medical	3.64	—
Business Services	3.22	—
Electronics	3.02	-11.45%
Pets & Animals	2.84	+2.51%
Ecommerce (Retail)	2.81	—
Real Estate	2.34	—
Health & Wellness	2.12	-15.64%
Travel & Tourism	2.12	—

Data sources: Triple Whale (2025), Focus Digital (2025)

Pets & Animals was the only industry that improved ROAS on Google in 2025. Travel & Luggage took the hardest hit, dropping 21% — likely driven by increased competition from OTA aggregators and rising CPCs in travel keywords.

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TikTok Ads ROAS benchmarks

TikTok's median ROAS sits at 1.41x — the lowest of the three major platforms. That number does not tell the whole story.

TikTok functions primarily as a discovery platform. Users aren't searching for products; they're scrolling through content. The direct-response attribution window captures only a fraction of TikTok's actual impact on purchase behavior. Many brands report that pausing TikTok spend causes drops in Google branded search volume and Meta retargeting pool sizes — indicating TikTok drives top-of-funnel demand that converts elsewhere.

That said, some categories do generate strong direct ROAS on TikTok:

Category	TikTok ROAS
Beauty & Personal Care	3.50
Apparel & Accessories	2.80
Home & Living	1.90
Food & Beverage	1.60
Electronics	1.20
Health & Supplements	1.10

Data sources: Upcounting ecommerce report (2025), Varos market data (Q1 2025)

Beauty at 3.50x is the standout. TikTok's format — short-form video with native-feeling creative — aligns perfectly with beauty product demonstrations. UGC-style ads consistently outperform polished studio content on TikTok, according to the platform's own creative best practices data.

Electronics at 1.20x reflects the mismatch between TikTok's audience intent (entertainment) and electronic purchase behavior (research-heavy, comparison-driven). These buyers discover on TikTok but convert through Google Search or directly on Amazon.

If you're evaluating TikTok ROAS, track the impact on your other channels before deciding it's not working. Look at branded search volume, direct traffic, and retargeting pool growth as secondary indicators.

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Cross-platform ROAS comparison

Putting all three platforms side by side with consistent methodology:

Platform	Median ROAS	Best Verticals	Weakest Verticals
Google Ads	3.52	Legal (4.21), Travel (4.30), Auto (3.85)	Health & Wellness (2.12)
Meta Ads	1.86	Auto (2.54), Sports (2.28), Travel (2.25)	Media (1.17), Health (1.50)
TikTok Ads	1.41	Beauty (3.50), Apparel (2.80)	Electronics (1.20), Health (1.10)

Data sources: Triple Whale (2025), Focus Digital (2025), Varos (Q1 2025)

Google wins on raw ROAS because it captures high-intent traffic. Meta wins on scale — more brands spend more budget on Meta than any other paid social platform. TikTok wins on cost-per-impression for top-of-funnel reach.

The right allocation depends on your funnel. As of 2025, a DTC brand doing $2M–$10M in annual revenue typically runs 50–60% of spend on Meta, 25–35% on Google, and 10–20% on TikTok. As you scale, TikTok's share tends to grow because Meta's prospecting costs increase with audience saturation.

Rule1 tracks ROAS across Meta and TikTok with attribution data from Triple Whale. Hit Rate Rules let you set custom ROAS thresholds per campaign type — prospecting at 2.0x, retargeting at 4.0x, TikTok at 1.5x — so your alerts match the benchmarks that actually apply to each campaign.

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Seasonal ROAS variation

ROAS is not static. It follows predictable seasonal patterns that catch advertisers off guard every year.

Q4 holiday surge

Meta's ROAS during Black Friday/Cyber Monday 2024 increased 17%, with conversion rates surging 32%. The average Facebook ROAS climbed to 2.79x during Q4 peak periods, compared to 1.86x for the full year. That's a 50% seasonal lift.

But costs climbed faster than most budgets anticipated. As of Q1 2025, Meta CPMs averaged $10.88, up 19.2% year over year. Q4 CPMs run even higher — often 30-50% above the annual average.

Q1 post-holiday correction

January typically delivers the year's lowest ROAS as consumer spending contracts after the holidays. Google Ads ROAS started 2025 at 3.71x in January and declined steadily through April (3.31x) — a 10.8% seasonal drop in four months.

Monthly Google Ads ROAS trend (Q1 2025)

Month	Median ROAS	Change from prior month
January	3.71	+12.1% (post-holiday bounce)
February	3.58	-3.5%
March	3.45	-3.6%
April	3.31	-4.1%

Data source: Focus Digital, Q1 2025

How to use seasonal data

Do not panic when your ROAS drops in Q1 or rises in Q4. Compare performance to the same period last year, not last month. If your January 2026 ROAS beats your January 2025 ROAS, you're improving — even if it's half of what you did in November.

Budget allocation should shift with the season. Increase daily ad spend 3-5x during BFCM, then pull back in January. If you use target ROAS bidding on Google, apply seasonality adjustments to prepare the algorithm for higher conversion rates during peak periods.

Ad fatigue also accelerates during high-spend periods. Rotate creative more frequently in Q4 to avoid burning through your best-performing ads in the first week of the holiday push.

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B2B and SaaS ROAS benchmarks

B2B operates on different timelines. Measuring ROAS over a 7-day window makes no sense when your sales cycle is 90 days. Here's what the data shows for longer-cycle businesses:

Segment	Average ROAS	Top 25% ROAS
Enterprise Tech	3.20	5.00+
Mid-Market SaaS	2.60	4.10
Manufacturing	1.80 – 2.30	3.50
Professional Services	2.80	4.20

Data sources: Directive Consulting (2025), First Page Sage (2019–2025 campaign data)

LinkedIn Ads deliver 2.0x-3.0x ROAS for B2B lead generation — competitive with Meta on a cost-per-qualified-lead basis, though CPMs run significantly higher.

Google Search remains the top-performing channel for B2B, with PPC ROAS averaging 1.70x for B2B SaaS and 2.25x for construction (as of 2025). The gap between PPC and SEO returns is striking: SEO delivers 8.75x for B2B SaaS versus 1.70x for PPC (as of 2025, per First Page Sage). That doesn't mean PPC is bad — it means SEO compounds over time while PPC returns are immediate but capped.

The key metric for B2B isn't raw ROAS — it's ROAS adjusted for customer lifetime value. A SaaS company with 24-month average retention can afford a 1.5x first-month ROAS because the LTV payback pushes total return above 6x over the customer lifetime.

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Why your ROAS is lower than benchmarks

If you've looked at these tables and found your numbers below the median, here are the most common causes — roughly in order of how often we see them.

Wrong campaign objective. Traffic and engagement campaigns on Meta return 0.52x and 0.70x respectively. Sales campaigns return 4.87x. If you're optimizing for the wrong objective, no amount of creative or targeting improvement will fix your ROAS.

Creative fatigue. Your ads have been running too long. Meta's algorithm will keep serving a declining ad because it still generates some results. Track frequency metrics and rotate creative before performance craters. Our guide on ad fatigue covers the warning signs and refresh cadence.

Attribution mismatch. You're comparing your 7-day click attribution ROAS to benchmarks that use 28-day or blended attribution. Shorter windows undercount conversions. Extend your attribution window or use a tool that stitches touchpoints across sessions.

Attribution windows produce wildly different ROAS numbers

This point deserves its own callout because it trips up nearly everyone who reads benchmark data.

The same campaign can show a 1.5x ROAS on a 7-day click window, a 3.0x ROAS on a 28-day click window, and a 4.2x ROAS when you add 1-day view-through attribution. Nothing changed about the campaign's actual performance — only the measurement window changed. Most of the benchmarks in this article use 7-day click attribution (Meta's default since 2021), but some sources blend in longer windows or view-through data without disclosing it.

iOS privacy changes made this worse. Apple's App Tracking Transparency framework (ATT), introduced in iOS 14.5, causes 20–30% underreporting of conversions on Meta as of 2025. If your customer base skews heavily toward iPhone users, your reported ROAS is likely understating real performance by a significant margin. Server-side tracking through Meta's Conversions API (CAPI) recovers some of those lost conversions — Meta reports that advertisers using CAPI alongside the pixel see a 13% improvement in reported cost-per-action on average (as of 2025).

When comparing your numbers to the benchmarks in this article, confirm which attribution window you're using. If you're on 7-day click and the benchmark uses 28-day click, your numbers will look 30–50% lower for the exact same campaign performance. Match the window before drawing conclusions.

Audience saturation. Your retargeting pool is too small or your prospecting audiences are exhausted. When the algorithm runs out of high-quality prospects, it serves ads to lower-intent users — dragging down ROAS. Expand your targeting or feed the top of the funnel with content and organic reach.

Margin mismatch with benchmarks. A 2.0x ROAS is profitable at 60% margins and a disaster at 25% margins. The ROAS formula is simple math, but the profitability interpretation depends entirely on your unit economics. Use the ROAS calculator to connect your ROAS to actual profit.

Rising CPMs compressing returns. As of early 2025, Meta CPMs had risen 19.2% year over year. Google CPCs climbed 12.88% across industries in the same period. If your revenue per conversion stayed flat while your costs increased, your ROAS fell mechanically. The fix is either better creative efficiency (more conversions per impression) or higher average order value.

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How to contextualize benchmarks for your business

Benchmarks are useful as directional signals, not performance targets. Here's a framework for turning the numbers above into action.

Step 1: Calculate your break-even ROAS. Use the formula 1 / gross margin. A 40% margin means you break even at 2.5x. Anything above that is profit. The break-even ROAS calculator does this in seconds.

Step 2: Compare channel-by-channel, not blended. Your Google Search ROAS and your TikTok prospecting ROAS should not be measured against the same target. Set per-channel thresholds based on the benchmarks in this article and your margin math.

Step 3: Compare to your own history first, benchmarks second. Your best comparison is yourself. If your Meta ROAS improved from 1.8x to 2.1x quarter over quarter, that's a strong signal regardless of whether the industry median is 2.54x.

Step 4: Factor in LTV. First-purchase ROAS understates actual return for businesses with repeat customers. A 1.8x first-purchase ROAS with a 3.2x LTV-to-CAC ratio is a healthy business.

Step 5: Watch the trend, not the snapshot. A single week's ROAS is noise. Rolling 28-day averages reveal real performance changes. Track these in ROAS analytics alongside your benchmarks.

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Five ways to improve your ROAS right now

Benchmarks tell you where you stand. These actions move the number.

• Switch to sales-optimized campaign objectives. This is the single biggest lever available to most advertisers. The data above shows Meta sales campaigns return 4.87x versus 0.52x for traffic campaigns — a 9x difference from a single settings change. If you're still running traffic or engagement objectives, switch today.
• Test creative systematically. Most brands run 2–3 ad variations and call it a day. Top performers test 10–20 variations per month using structured frameworks that isolate variables. Our creative testing framework breaks down how to build a repeatable testing process.
• Fix creative fatigue before it tanks returns. Ads degrade predictably. Frequency climbs, CTR drops, CPAs rise. If you wait until ROAS craters to swap creative, you've already wasted budget. Monitor the early warning signs and rotate proactively — the full playbook is in our ad fatigue guide.
• Increase average order value. ROAS = revenue / ad spend. Increasing revenue per conversion through bundle offers, upsells, post-purchase cross-sells, and higher-priced product lines directly improves ROAS without changing a single ad setting. For example, as of 2025, the median DTC AOV sits around $45 — a brand that lifts that to $65 through bundling sees a 44% ROAS improvement at the same conversion rate.
• Audit your attribution setup. As covered in the attribution section above, misconfigured tracking can underreport conversions by 20–30%. Implement server-side tracking (CAPI for Meta, enhanced conversions for Google), verify your pixel fires correctly on purchase events, and confirm you're using the same attribution window as the benchmarks you're comparing against.

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FAQ

What is the average ROAS across all industries?

The average ecommerce ROAS in 2025 was 2.87x, according to data from Triple Whale and Upcounting. Half of ecommerce businesses operate below 2.0x ROAS. The median varies by platform: Google Ads at 3.52x, Meta at 1.86x, TikTok at 1.41x.

What is a good ROAS for ecommerce?

It depends on your margins. At 50% gross margins, anything above 2.0x is profitable. A ROAS of 4.0x or higher puts you in the top tier of ecommerce advertisers. For a longer answer with margin-based calculations, read the full good ROAS guide.

What is a good ROAS for Facebook ads?

The platform average is 1.86x. By industry, automotive leads at 2.54x, while media and publishing trails at 1.17x. Sales-optimized campaigns return a median of 4.87x — if you're below 2.0x on a sales campaign, there's room to improve.

What is a good ROAS for Google Ads?

Google's overall median ROAS is 3.52x. Search campaigns specifically deliver 5.17x. If you're running Search campaigns below 3.0x, examine your keyword targeting and landing page conversion rates. Google considers 2.0x to be an acceptable baseline.

What is a good ROAS for TikTok ads?

The median is 1.41x, but beauty and apparel brands regularly hit 2.8x-3.5x. TikTok's direct ROAS underrepresents its value — track branded search volume and Meta retargeting pool growth as secondary indicators of TikTok's impact.

How does ROAS vary by season?

Q4 delivers the highest ROAS, with Meta ROAS climbing roughly 50% during BFCM compared to annual averages. Q1 typically sees the year's lowest performance as consumers pull back after holiday spending. Compare your ROAS to the same period last year, not to last month.

Why is my ROAS dropping year over year?

Rising platform costs are the primary driver. As of 2025, Meta CPMs had increased 19.2% and Google CPCs rose 12.88%. ROAS declined in 13 of 14 industries on Google Ads. To counter this, improve creative efficiency, increase average order value, or reallocate spend toward higher-performing campaign types.