Platform ROAS is not a business metric.

Platform ROAS is useful. It is also easy to misuse.

It tells you how much revenue a platform attributed to itself based on its rules, windows, and available signals. That can be helpful for campaign diagnostics. But it is not the same thing as profit, cash efficiency, incrementality, or business health.

A DTC brand can have strong platform ROAS while blended MER is flat. Meta can look efficient while new customer acquisition is weakening. Google can report profitable revenue while branded demand is doing most of the work. None of this means the platforms are "wrong." It means their reports answer a narrower question than the business actually needs answered.

The better question is not "What ROAS did the platform report?" It is "What decision are we making, and is platform ROAS enough evidence to support it?"

What to put beside platform ROAS

• Compare platform ROAS with MER, CAC, new customer revenue, and contribution.
• Separate prospecting, retargeting, branded demand, and returning customer capture.
• Look for cases where attributed revenue rises but blended business performance does not.

Strong media analytics puts platform ROAS in context with CAC, MER, new customer revenue, contribution margin, repeat purchase behavior, and incrementality. The goal is not to ignore platform reporting. The goal is to stop confusing platform credit with business truth.