What is a good ROAS for a pet supplement brand?

By Geetika Saini, Founder, Pet Tails Marketing · 13 October 2026 · 6 min read

A good ROAS is any ROAS above your own breakeven, and your margins decide what that is. Breakeven ROAS equals 1 divided by your contribution margin before ad spend. If you keep 50 cents of every sales dollar after product, shipping and fees, your breakeven ROAS is 2.0. Your target sits above that, by the profit you want.

Why is there no single good ROAS for pet supplements?

Because ROAS is a revenue number and profit depends on costs that differ by brand. Two brands can both report a ROAS of 2.5. One makes money because its chews cost little to make and ship. The other loses money because it pays for cold chain shipping, heavy discounts and high returns.

Benchmarks you see online mix these brands together, and they rarely say how ROAS was measured. So we do not quote them. The only benchmark that matters is your breakeven, and you can work it out in ten minutes with your own numbers.

How is ROAS calculated?

ROAS is conversion value divided by ad spend. Google's target ROAS help page gives this example: $5 in sales divided by $1 in ad spend, times 100%, equals a 500% target ROAS. Meta and most dashboards show the same idea as a ratio, like 5.0. Both mean five dollars of tracked revenue for every dollar spent.

The catch is in the word "tracked". ROAS uses revenue the platform attributed to its ads, not your profit, and not every sale. That is why the next step is to connect ROAS to margin.

What is breakeven ROAS and how do you work it out?

Breakeven ROAS is the ROAS at which ad spend uses up all the profit on the order, so you make zero. Below it, every sale from ads loses money. Above it, you keep something.

Contribution before ads = Revenue minus (product cost + shipping and fulfilment + payment fees + discounts and returns)
Contribution margin = Contribution before ads / Revenue
Breakeven ROAS = 1 / Contribution margin

Here is a worked example with made-up numbers for a jar of joint chews. Replace each line with your own.

In this example, any ROAS under 1.94 loses money on the first order. A ROAS of 2.5 looks fine on its own, and it is, but a ROAS of 1.8 that looked "okay" is a loss.

How do you set a target ROAS above breakeven?

Decide how much profit you want to keep from each order, then work backwards.

Maximum ad spend per order = Contribution before ads minus target profit
Target ROAS = Revenue / Maximum ad spend per order

Using the same order: if you want to keep $6 (10% of revenue) after ads, you can spend up to $25 on ads per order. Target ROAS = 60 / 25 = 2.4, or 240% in Google's terms.

That 2.4 is the number you put into a target ROAS bid strategy or use to judge campaigns. Not a number from a forum.

Does a subscription change the ROAS you can accept?

Yes, but carefully. If a share of first-time buyers go on to reorder, the true value of a new customer is higher than the first order. That can justify a first-order ROAS below breakeven.

Three rules keep this honest:

1. Use your own repeat data. Look at how many first-time customers from a past period actually reordered, and how many times. Do not assume a lifetime value you have not seen yet.
2. Count contribution, not revenue. Repeat orders still carry product, shipping and fee costs.
3. Check cash. Losing money on the first order and earning it back over months needs cash to fund the gap.

Our guide to subscription growth for pet brands covers how to grow that repeat rate.

Which ROAS number should you trust?

Each ad platform counts the sales it influenced, using its own attribution rules. If a customer clicks a Google ad and saw a Meta ad, both may claim the sale. Add up platform ROAS and you will often get more revenue than your store took.

So check two numbers side by side every week:

If blended ROAS sits below your breakeven while platform ROAS looks healthy, the platforms are over-counting, or ads are taking credit for sales you would have made anyway.

Can Google Ads report profit instead of revenue?

It can, with setup. Google's conversions with cart data feature, combined with the cost of goods sold attribute in Merchant Center, lets Google Ads estimate gross profit. Merchant Center says the COGS value does not need to be exact, and that it is used to calculate an estimated gross profit for your products.

On Shopify, enter cost per item on each product. Shopify notes that pricing details like this help you track operating costs and profits, and it makes your margin maths faster.

What should you do with this today?

1. Work out contribution before ads for your top three products or bundles.
2. Calculate breakeven ROAS for each one.
3. Choose a profit per order and calculate target ROAS.
4. Compare last month's blended ROAS against breakeven.
5. Move budget toward products and campaigns that beat target. Fix or pause the ones that do not.

If your ads keep getting stuck in review before you can even test ROAS, start with our pet supplement ad policy guide. For help running the numbers and the campaigns, see our paid ads services.

Written by Geetika Saini, Founder, Pet Tails Marketing. Pet Tails is a Mumbai-based growth agency for pet supplement, pet apparel and veterinary brands in the USA and Canada. This article is general information, not legal or regulatory advice.