Advertising and marketing metrics
POAS (profit on ad spend)
Gross profit attributed to ads divided by ad spend. Unlike ROAS it accounts for product margin, which makes it the better target for deciding where budget goes.
POAS is gross profit attributed to advertising divided by ad spend. Where ROAS answers 'how much revenue did this spend bring back', POAS answers 'how much profit'. A campaign with a ROAS of 4 on products with a 20 percent margin and one with a ROAS of 2.5 on products with a 60 percent margin look very different once you calculate it.
To compute it you need cost of goods per product, and ideally the other variable costs of an order: shipping, payment fees and returns. That data often lives in the store (cost per item fields or metafields) rather than in the ad platform, which is why POAS is usually produced by combining sources: ad spend from the ad accounts, orders and costs from the store.
POAS matters beyond reporting. Ad platforms optimise toward the conversion value they receive. If that value is revenue, bidding favours high-revenue, low-margin orders. If profit is sent as the value, through server-side tracking, the same bidding strategies work toward profit instead. An assistant connected to both ads and store data can show the gap between the two views.