What Is a Good ROAS for Google Ads? Benchmarks by Industry

Return on ad spend (ROAS) measures how much revenue you generate for every dollar spent on advertising: a 5x ROAS means $5 in revenue for every $1 in ad spend. Industry benchmarks give useful context for the number, but the right target depends on your margins, not on anyone else's average. This guide covers both: what a good ROAS actually is for your business, and where the directional benchmarks sit by industry.

What Is a Good ROAS?

A good ROAS is one that clears your break-even point with room to spare, and break-even is set by gross margin. Divide 1 by your gross margin to find it: at a 50% margin, break-even is 2x; at a 25% margin, it is 4x. The often-quoted rule of thumb that 4x is healthy only holds for businesses whose margins make it so; a 70% margin software business can profit at 2x while a 20% margin retailer loses money at 4x.

So before comparing against any benchmark, work out your own break-even ROAS. A campaign beating your break-even with room for overheads may be working, whatever the industry table says. Check whether Google Ads makes sense for your industry with our Is Google Ads Worth It? analysis tool.

ROAS Benchmarks by Industry (2026)

The figures below are directional aggregates drawn from public benchmark studies. Treat them as context for expectations, not as targets; account-level results vary widely with offer, brand strength, and tracking setup.

Industries that tend towards the higher end:

• Attorneys & Legal Services: around 8x, high case values justify premium CPCs
• Travel & Hospitality: around 6.5x, strong booking values and repeat customers
• Restaurants & Food: around 6x, low CPCs with consistent customer flow
• Automotive Sales: around 6x, high-value transactions offset higher CPCs
• Arts & Entertainment: around 5.5x, lower competition with engaged audiences

The middle of the range:

• Dental: around 5.5x, high patient lifetime values drive returns
• Healthcare: around 5x, strong demand with some compliance costs
• Real Estate: around 5x, long cycles but high commission values
• E-commerce: around 4.5x, volume-dependent with thinner margins
• Beauty & Personal Care: around 4.5x, repeat business boosts lifetime value

The lower end, where a lower ROAS does not mean Google Ads is not worth it; these industries often have longer sales cycles or harder attribution:

• Career & Employment: around 3.5x, attribution challenges with long hiring cycles
• B2B Services: around 4x, long sales cycles make measurement harder
• Furniture: around 4x, high-consideration purchases with long decision windows

Explore ROAS and ROI details for each industry on our Is It Worth It industry pages.

Why Platform ROAS Usually Reads High

One caveat applies to every number above: benchmark tables describe platform-reported ROAS, and platform ROAS usually sits at the ceiling of your ads' real contribution. Attribution records contact, not cause, so brand searchers who had already chosen you and retargeted visitors returning anyway all count as attributed revenue. The gap between claimed and caused is the subject of platform ROAS vs incremental ROAS, and the method for measuring what your spend actually causes is covered in our guide to paid media incrementality.

The practical consequence: if your platform ROAS just clears break-even, your true return may not. Building targets that account for this is part of our paid media efficiency work.

How to Improve Your ROAS

• Focus on high-intent keywords that drive revenue, not just traffic
• Implement conversion tracking that goes beyond form fills to actual revenue
• Cut wasted spend through negative keywords and regular search term audits
• Optimise landing pages to improve conversion rates
• Use remarketing to recapture warm audiences at lower CPCs, and check it is incremental