Ad Budget Calculator
Calculate the required ad spend to hit a revenue target based on ROAS, average order value, and conversion rate.
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How to use this calculator
ROAS (Return on Ad Spend) tells you how much revenue each dollar of ad spend generates. Dividing the revenue target by ROAS gives the required budget. Orders = revenue / AOV; clicks = orders / (conversion_rate/100); impressions = clicks / CTR.
- 1
Enter your monthly or campaign revenue target and the average value of an order.
- 2
Set your landing page conversion rate — find this in Google Analytics or your ad platform.
- 3
Input your ROAS target (e.g. 4 means $4 revenue for every $1 spent).
- 4
The required ad spend tells you the minimum budget needed. Adjust ROAS to model conservative vs optimistic scenarios.
Frequently asked questions
What formulas does the ad budget calculator use?
Required spend = revenue target ÷ ROAS target. Expected orders = revenue target ÷ average order value. Clicks needed = orders ÷ (conversion rate ÷ 100). Impressions needed = clicks ÷ 0.01. Orders, clicks and impressions are rounded up to whole numbers for display. With the defaults ($50,000 target, $85 AOV, 2.5% conversion, 4× ROAS) the page shows $12,500.00, 589 orders, 23,530 clicks and 2,352,942 impressions.
Why is the impressions figure tied to a 1% click-through rate?
The 1% CTR is hard-coded in the calculation and is not an input, so it is the tool’s own planning assumption rather than a measured rate. If your expected CTR is different, divide the clicks figure by your own CTR as a decimal to get your impressions estimate. The spend, order and click figures do not depend on it.
Do AOV and conversion rate change the required spend?
No. Spend depends only on the revenue target and the ROAS target. AOV and conversion rate set how much traffic the plan implies: at 1% conversion the default plan needs 58,824 clicks, at 5% only 11,765, and the spend stays $12,500.00 in both cases. Whether that spend can actually buy that many clicks depends on your cost per click, which this page does not take as an input.
Is ROAS the same as profit?
No. ROAS here is revenue ÷ ad spend, so a 4× target means $4 of revenue per $1 spent, before product costs, shipping, fees or discounts. A campaign can hit its ROAS target and still lose money if margins are thin. Use the gross margin to work out the break-even ROAS yourself and enter something above it.
What happens if I enter a conversion rate of zero?
Clicks and impressions cannot be derived from a zero conversion rate, so both lines show “N/A (conversion rate is 0)” while the spend and order lines still calculate. Average order value and ROAS target are floored at 0.01 internally, to avoid dividing by zero, so a 0 in either field, which is also what an emptied box becomes, produces very large numbers rather than an error.
Does the result tell me how to split the budget over days or channels?
No. It returns one total for the whole period your revenue target covers, with no daily pacing, no platform split and no allowance for a learning phase, seasonality or repeat purchases from existing customers. Treat it as a first-pass budget sanity check.
Why are the orders and clicks numbers rounded up?
Each is passed through a ceiling function so the plan never falls short. The default revenue of $50,000 at $85 is 588.2 orders, shown as 589. Impressions are computed from the unrounded click count, then rounded up once, which is why 33,333.3 clicks appear as 33,334 and the impressions line shows 3,333,334 in the second example.
Working backwards from a revenue target to spend, orders, clicks and impressions
The chain of calculations
Everything starts from the revenue target. Dividing it by the ROAS target gives the spend; dividing it by average order value gives the number of orders; dividing orders by the conversion rate gives clicks; and dividing clicks by 1% gives impressions. Only the first step involves ROAS. The others are a funnel worked in reverse, so a mistake in conversion rate or AOV changes traffic needs but never the spend. Check those two inputs against your own analytics rather than a guess.
Worked example: the default plan
A $50,000 revenue target at an $85 average order value, 2.5% landing-page conversion and a 4× ROAS gives a required spend of $12,500.00. That implies 589 orders, 23,530 clicks and 2,352,942 impressions. Dividing the spend by the clicks gives the average cost per click the plan can afford, so compare that number with what your campaigns actually pay before committing the budget.
How ROAS and conversion rate move the plan
Keeping the other defaults fixed, the first table varies only the ROAS target: spend moves, orders and clicks do not. The second varies only conversion rate: clicks move, spend does not.
| Input changed | Required spend | Orders | Clicks needed |
|---|---|---|---|
| ROAS target 2 | $25,000.00 | 589 | 23,530 |
| ROAS target 3 | $16,666.67 | 589 | 23,530 |
| ROAS target 5 | $10,000.00 | 589 | 23,530 |
| Conversion rate 1% | $12,500.00 | 589 | 58,824 |
| Conversion rate 5% | $12,500.00 | 589 | 11,765 |
| AOV $170 | $12,500.00 | 295 | 11,765 |
A smaller second scenario
Take a $20,000 target, a $40 order value, 1.5% conversion and a 2.5× ROAS. The page returns $8,000.00 of spend, 500 orders, 33,334 clicks and 3,333,334 impressions. Lower-priced products need many more orders to reach the same revenue, which is why a low AOV with a modest ROAS target can imply far more traffic than it first appears.
What the budget figure does not cover
The required spend is a minimum under the assumption that the target ROAS is achieved across the whole campaign. It does not model diminishing returns as spend rises, the time it takes platforms to optimise, or the fact that early weeks of a campaign often perform differently from later ones. If you are unsure of your achievable ROAS, run the calculation with two or three values, as in the first table, and decide which scenario you could fund. Revisit the plan once real click costs and conversion rates arrive, replacing the assumptions with actuals.
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Results are estimates for informational purposes only and do not constitute professional financial, medical, legal, or technical advice. Read full disclaimer →