Everyone wants a higher ROAS. Better creative, better targeting, better results.

But here’s something that’s going to sound backwards.

A high ROAS at low spend might be the most expensive mistake in ecommerce.

Here’s what I mean.

We picked up a client running a luxury shower brand. They’d been spending around £5k a month on Meta for a full year. Getting a 4x return consistently. Team was happy. Thought the business was doing well.

Then we looked at the numbers properly.

A 4x ROAS at low spend doesn’t mean the product is limited. It means the product converts and the spend is too low to find out how far it can go.

High ROAS at low volume = underscaled demand.

We took over creative and pushed spend hard. One month later: £700k in revenue. Same product. Same market. Same offer.

The difference wasn’t the product. It was someone being willing to look at a 4x ROAS and say: that’s not a result. That’s a starting point.

Same thing happened with BeyondNine. They came to us doing $300k a month with an 8x ROAS. Their previous agency was worried about frequency. Wanted to protect the efficiency. Our read: you make more money acquiring customers at volume. The 8x ROAS doesn’t mean slow down. It means spend more.

18 months later: $2M a month.

Here’s the real lesson. It’s not about ROAS. It’s about CPA.

When CPA is low and volume is low, you’re not winning. You’re waiting.

Agencies that protect efficiency at low spend are protecting their client’s comfort zone, not their revenue. They’ve never had to look a founder in the eye and explain why the account is efficient but the business isn’t growing.

Agencies who’ve never been accountable for CPA at scale will always optimise for what looks good on a slide deck. ROAS looks great. Revenue growth looks terrifying.

The question is never: how is my ROAS?

The question is: what would my revenue be if I scaled spend until CPA broke?

If you haven’t found that number, you haven’t found your ceiling.

Reply if you want to find yours.