ROAS Benchmarks by Industry: 2026 Performance Ranges
Pick one north star outcome, model the LTV to CAC ceiling that lets the business actually scale, lock the channel stack to the top three by marginal return and operate in 90 day sprints with incrementality holdouts. Most plans fail because they spread thin across channels with no holdout. Unled has personally deployed seven figure budgets against this framework.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is the single number most operators use to judge a campaign. But context matters, a 2.5x ROAS is incredible in luxury, mediocre in supplements, and a disaster in mobile gaming. Here are honest 2026 benchmarks across the major verticals, plus what to look at when yours is below the line.
How to Read These Benchmarks
Reported ROAS varies wildly based on attribution window, in-platform vs. blended measurement, organic baseline, and how brand spend is treated. Treat the ranges below as directional, not absolute.
- In-platform ROAS (what Meta or Google reports) is typically 30-80% higher than blended ROAS measured in your real BI stack.
- Attribution window matters. 7-day click is the modern Meta standard. Comparing 28-day click to 7-day click misleads.
- Brand spend dilutes the average. Branded search runs 8-15x ROAS and pulls the blended number up. Look at non-brand ROAS for honest performance signal.
- First-purchase vs. LTV. First-purchase ROAS of 1.2x can be wildly profitable for subscription businesses with $400 LTV.
E-commerce ROAS by Vertical
- Apparel / fashion: Average 2.0-3.5x · Top decile 5.0x+
- Beauty / skincare: Average 2.5-4.0x · Top decile 6.0x+
- Health / supplements: Average 1.5-2.5x · Top decile 4.0x+
- Home / furniture: Average 2.5-4.5x · Top decile 7.0x+
- Electronics: Average 3.0-5.0x · Top decile 8.0x+
- Food / CPG: Average 1.8-3.0x · Top decile 4.5x+
- Luxury ($500+ AOV): Average 3.0-6.0x · Top decile 12.0x+
The single biggest lever for paid-media performance in 2026 is account hygiene. Aged accounts, clean payment instruments, and isolated browser profiles compound into a 30 to 50 percent CPA advantage on the same creative.
Lead-Gen ROAS / CPL Benchmarks
Lead-gen advertisers should track Cost Per Lead (CPL) and Lead-to-Revenue conversion in addition to or instead of ROAS.
- Insurance: CPL 5-$80 · Lead-to-policy 3-8%
- Mortgage: CPL $40-$120 · Lead-to-fund 2-5%
- Solar: CPL $80-00 · Lead-to-install 3-7%
- Legal (personal injury): CPL $150-$400 · Lead-to-case 4-10%
- SaaS demo request: CPL $50-00 · Lead-to-MQL 25-40%
- Local services: CPL 0-$80 · Lead-to-close 15-35%
SaaS / Subscription ROAS
SaaS ROAS is meaningless on first purchase. Track Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) against Lifetime Value (LTV).
- Healthy SaaS: LTV/CAC ratio of 3.0-5.0x.
- Payback period: < 12 months for venture-backed; < 6 months for bootstrapped.
- B2B SaaS demo CPL: $50-$300 acceptable; product depends on ACV.
- Consumer subscription first-purchase ROAS: 0.7-1.2x acceptable if 60-day LTV is 2.5x+ first-purchase.
- Trial-to-paid conversion: 15-35% benchmark across SaaS verticals.
Mobile App ROAS
- Casual games (D7 ROAS): Average 8-15% · Top decile 25%+
- Casual games (D30 ROAS): Average 25-45% · Top decile 70%+
- Hyper-casual games (D7 ROAS): Average 30-55% (target 100%+ break-even at D7)
- Subscription apps (D30 ROAS): Average 40-80% · Top decile 150%+
- Utility apps (D30 ROAS): Highly variable, 20-200% depending on monetization model.
What to Do When ROAS Is Below Benchmark
- Audit creative first. 60% of below-benchmark performance traces back to creative. New creative beats new audiences.
- Audit landing page conversion rate. If your landing page is below 2.5% (e-commerce) or 8% (lead-gen), creative will never save you.
- Check attribution health. If Meta CAPI / TikTok Events API isn't installed, you're undercounting conversions by 30-50%.
- Check audience signal. If you're targeting cold + retargeting in the same campaign, retargeting cannibalizes the cold ROAS reading.
- Look at LTV, not just ROAS. First-purchase ROAS of 1.2x is brilliant for a 60-day LTV business; it's terrible for one-and-done products.
- If everything is fine and ROAS is still low, accept the unit economics. Some products simply don't have headroom for paid acquisition. Pivot to organic, retention, or category.
ROAS benchmarks are a starting point, not a verdict. Use them to gut-check whether you're in the realistic range for your vertical, then drive improvements by working backward from the unit-economics math, not the platform-reported number.
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Comments
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Great article. Do you have any case studies showing the ROI of this approach?
This resonates with what we see across accounts. For roas benchmarks by industry 2026, the combination of proper structure and testing makes all the difference.