What Do Your Ads Actually Leave You?
Ad efficiency, pipeline conversion, and profit economics in one view. Find your profitability gap from your own numbers. Change any field and every number below moves with it.
These are example numbers, not benchmarks. Change any field to see your own.
Step 01
Ad efficiency
Share of clicks that become a lead
Agency fees, tools, freelancers
Step 02
Pipeline and revenue
Order value or first contract value
Days from first click to closed sale
Step 03
Profit economics
Revenue left after cost of goods
Commission, onboarding, payment fees
The verdict
+$51,875a month
Your ads clear $51,875 a month. Each customer costs $1,944 fully loaded and leaves $5,000 in contribution profit, so you keep $3,056 per customer. You could pay up to $5,000 before ads stop paying for themselves.
Fully loaded CAC
$1,944
Media plus the cost of running the ads, per customer you keep
Contribution profit per customer
$5,000
What one customer leaves before you pay for the click
Breakeven CPA
$5,000
The most you can pay to win a customer and still break even
Breakeven ROAS
1.8x
Set by your margin, not by anyone else's numbers
Where the money goes
One month, from revenue you keep down to real profit.
Your month, step by step
5,000
Clicks
$6.00 each
200
Leads
$150 per lead
70
Opportunities
$429 each
17
Customers kept
$1,944 each
Revenue divided by media spend
What an ad platform would report
Revenue divided by every acquisition cost
After refunds and the cost of running the ads
Ad spend committed before the first sale closes
45 day sales cycle at this monthly spend
Every figure on this page is calculated from the fields on the left. Nothing here is an industry average or a stored benchmark.
How do you work out the real profit your ads produce?
Real profit from ads is what is left after cost of goods, per sale costs, media spend, and the cost of running the ads. Start with ad spend and cost per click to get clicks, apply your click to lead rate, then your lead to opportunity rate and close rate to get sales. Take out refunds to get customers you keep. Multiply by average sale value, remove cost of goods and any other cost per sale to get contribution profit, then subtract media and management cost. What remains is your real monthly profit or loss.
Breakeven ROAS comes from your own margin, not from an industry number. At a 60% gross margin with no other cost per sale, ads have to return about 1.67x before the first dollar of profit appears.
The formula
Customers kept per month
(Ad Spend / Cost per Click) x Click to Lead % x Lead to Opportunity % x Opportunity to Close % x (1 - Refund %)
Contribution profit per customer
(Average Sale Value x Gross Margin %) - Other Variable Cost per Sale
This is the money one customer leaves behind before you pay for the click.
Fully loaded CAC
(Monthly Ad Spend + Monthly Ad Management Cost) / Customers Kept
Breakeven CPA
Contribution Profit per Customer
Breakeven ROAS
1 / (Gross Margin % - (Other Variable Cost per Sale / Average Sale Value))
Real monthly profit
(Customers Kept x Contribution Profit per Customer) - Ad Spend - Ad Management Cost
Breakeven sale value
(Fully Loaded CAC + Other Variable Cost per Sale) / Gross Margin %
The average sale you would need, at today's margin, for the month to break even.
Worked example
- Monthly ad spend
- $30,000
- Average cost per click
- $6.00
- Click to lead rate
- 4%
- Monthly ad management cost
- $3,000
- Lead to opportunity rate
- 35%
- Opportunity to close rate
- 25%
- Average sale value
- $9,000
- Gross margin
- 60%
- Refund or cancellation rate
- 3%
- Other variable cost per sale
- $400
That spend buys 5,000 clicks and 200 leads at a $150 cost per lead, which becomes 70 opportunities and 17.5 sales. After a 3% refund rate you keep about 17 customers. Each one leaves $5,000 in contribution profit, so fully loaded CAC lands near $1,944 against a $5,000 breakeven CPA. The month clears about $51,875 in real profit, and breakeven ROAS sits at 1.8x.
Frequently asked questions
What is fully loaded CAC?
Fully loaded CAC is every cost of acquiring a customer divided by the customers you actually keep. It includes media spend plus the cost of running the ads, such as agency fees, tools, and freelancers. It is usually well above the cost per conversion an ad platform reports, because the platform only counts media and only counts conversions it can see.
What is a good breakeven ROAS?
There is no single good number. Breakeven ROAS is set by your own margin: it is one divided by the share of each revenue dollar you keep after cost of goods and other per sale costs. A high margin business breaks even at a low ROAS. A thin margin business needs a much higher one for the same result.
Why does my ad platform say I am profitable when I am not?
Ad platforms compare reported revenue to media spend. They do not know your cost of goods, your commission, your refund rate, or what you pay to run the account. Once those costs go in, a healthy looking ROAS can still add up to a monthly loss.
Does the sales cycle change the profit number?
It does not change the profit math, but it changes when you see the money. The calculator shows how much ad spend you commit before the first sale from this month closes, so you can see the cash you float while the pipeline works.
What if my contribution profit per customer is negative?
Then no amount of ad efficiency fixes it. Every sale loses money before you buy a single click, so the fix is price, margin, or the cost of serving the sale. The calculator flags this case instead of showing a breakeven ROAS you could never reach.
Formulas last reviewed September 2026. Ad Prophet analyzes accounts spending $30K+/month on Google Ads.
Next step
Find your next test.
This calculator works from the numbers you type. A Free Growth Read reviews your website, public ads, and competitors to suggest a next test. It does not measure your spend, conversions, or profit.
No card. No ad or analytics account access. About 5 minutes.