ROAS is a metric. Profitability is the objective.

Every week, someone sends a screenshot of a 6X ROAS and calls it scaling. Every month, someone discovers the business behind the screenshot couldn't cover payroll. The gap between those two moments is usually contribution margin — or the absence of it from the reporting view.

ROAS measures what the ad platform can see. Profitability measures what the business keeps. Product costs, shipping, payment fees, discounts, refunds and overhead all live between those two numbers, and none of them show up inside Ads Manager.

The fix isn't a better dashboard. It's a better definition of success, agreed before the campaign launches: what does a new customer need to be worth for this spend to be smart? Work backwards from that number, and the media plan starts making commercial decisions instead of aesthetic ones.

When we audit accounts, the first thing we build isn't a new campaign — it's a blended view of CAC, AOV and contribution margin by channel. Campaigns then get optimized against business reality instead of platform applause.