ROI / ROAS

Return on investment / on ad spend — profit-truth metrics whose honesty depends entirely on cost completeness and time horizon.

ROI nets all costs against returns; ROAS divides revenue by ad spend — the media buyer’s operating metric and the CFO’s starting point.

Gambling-specific honesty rules

Revenue means NGR (bonus costs included), not deposits — ROAS on deposit numbers flatters catastrophically. Horizons matter: revshare and retention value accrue over months, so day-30 ROAS undervalues quality sources and overvalues churn-and-burn ones; LTV-projected ROAS with stated confidence is the mature compromise. Per-channel attribution feuds (the last-click question again) make blended plus incrementality checks the sanity anchor.