Sep 10, 2026 · 18 min · 9 segments
ROAS SPECIAL EP2: ROAS is a Toxic Love Language ROAS. It's everywhere. In media plans. In ad consoles. In AOP meetings. In strategic decks. And, apparently, in the emotional lives of marketing and…
Mrunal BhagatGuestColin LewisHost
Viv CraskeHost
Whenever I say that retail media has thrived for decades, more than decades on a fraud metric ROAS, I get people raising their eyebrows and I have seen the crowd divided.
So the reason why I say ROAS is a fraud metric, and let me give you an example, because 2027 is just a few months away.
And I'm sure that, you know, these AOP and strategic meetings have made its way onto everyone's calendars, right? There is a mistake that brands make during these calls.
This mistake is that, you know, they base their commercial decisions on a media metric.
We would start by analyzing which media touchpoint or which ad type has the highest ROAS.
And because of that, the only time sales team would contact the marketing because they are having lower sales or they are struggling in this volatile market and they want solution.
Marketing team has zero knowledge of what's happening in the market and their common love language is ROAS.
That's the common denominator wherein they agree that's the common language they understand.
It just reports back on what's happened after you have executed a media strategy or your campaign has ended.
It fails to tell your top management what you need to do before making that decision or before allocating that budget, right? And ROAS cannot distinguish between your actual genuine new growth and existing sales.
First of all, you've referenced what I call John Paul George Ringo problem, which is the shopper doesn't talk to brand, doesn't talk to commercial, doesn't talk to digital.
And as you lovely way of putting it, it's the love language that they all agree with is ROAS.
So actually, that's quite an interesting kind of idea, which we've never really talked about before, which is like, We can't come up with a common language, so we'll just say it's Ross.
Whenever I say that retail media has thrived for decades, more than decades on a fraud metric ROAS, I get people raising their eyebrows and I have seen the crowd divided.
So the reason why I say ROAS is a fraud metric, and let me give you an example, because 2027 is just a few months away.
And I'm sure that, you know, these AOP and strategic meetings have made its way onto everyone's calendars, right? There is a mistake that brands make during these calls.
This mistake is that, you know, they base their commercial decisions on a media metric.
We would start by analyzing which media touchpoint or which ad type has the highest ROAS.
And because of that, the only time sales team would contact the marketing because they are having lower sales or they are struggling in this volatile market and they want solution.
Marketing team has zero knowledge of what's happening in the market and their common love language is ROAS.
That's the common denominator wherein they agree that's the common language they understand.
It just reports back on what's happened after you have executed a media strategy or your campaign has ended.
It fails to tell your top management what you need to do before making that decision or before allocating that budget, right? And ROAS cannot distinguish between your actual genuine new growth and existing sales.
First of all, you've referenced what I call John Paul George Ringo problem, which is the shopper doesn't talk to brand, doesn't talk to commercial, doesn't talk to digital.
And as you lovely way of putting it, it's the love language that they all agree with is ROAS.
So actually, that's quite an interesting kind of idea, which we've never really talked about before, which is like, We can't come up with a common language, so we'll just say it's Ross.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.
