ROAS (Return on Ad Spend)

Formula: attributed revenue ÷ total spend. Industry-wide 2026 benchmarks put average influencer ROAS around $5–$6 back per $1 spent, with top-performing, high-conversion programs reporting $18–$20 back per $1 — a wide enough range that your own category number matters more than the industry average. Attribution is the hard part: unique codes and UTMs per creator are the floor. Brands using multi-touch attribution instead of last-click alone report meaningfully higher measured ROAS, because a shopper who saw three creators before buying does not credit only the last one.

ROAS answers a different question than EMV. EMV says the campaign was loud. ROAS says whether it paid for itself. For a considered-purchase brand, expect ROAS to lag the post by days or weeks — check the attribution window before calling a wave a failure. Pair ROAS with CPE to catch a wave that sold well but too expensively.