Soft ROAS With No Root Cause: Feed, Creative, Landing, or Auction

ROAS is down 18 percent over three weeks. So the team changes four things and learns nothing.

Soft ROAS is a symptom with at least four possible owners.

Step zero: make sure the number is real

Reconcile platform revenue against your backend and compare complete, equivalent windows.

The decomposition that tells you where to look

• CPM moved: auction, audience, placement, geography, or seasonality
• CTR moved: creative, hook, format, or placement mix
• CVR moved: landing page, offer, checkout, inventory, traffic quality, or tracking
• AOV moved: product mix, discounting, or upsell behavior

The 30 minute triage

• Reconcile revenue
• Count serving products
• Compare CPM, CTR, CVR, and AOV within segments
• Check site deploys and app updates
• Change one thing in one branch

Stop at the first branch that shows a real change. Changing everything at once guarantees the next investigation will be just as confused.