23 metric guides
Marketing metrics, explained properly
Plain-English guides to the numbers D2C marketers make decisions on. Each one covers what the metric is, exactly how it is calculated, worked examples, and how to use it to decide what to scale, fix or cut.
Reach & creative
4 guidesHow far your ads travel, how often people see them, and when creatives wear out.
New ReachThe number of people an ad reached today who had never seen it before. It tells you whether your spend is still finding fresh audiences or circling back to the same people.Read guide →FrequencyThe average number of times each person reached has seen your ad. Simple to calculate, easy to misread: the window you pick and the spread behind the average change what it tells you.Read guide →Hook rate and hold rateTwo ratios that split a video ad's performance into its opening and its body. Hook rate shows whether the first seconds stop the scroll. Hold rate shows whether the rest keeps people watching.Read guide →Creative fatigueThe point where an ad stops performing because people have seen it too often, or have stopped caring about it. It isn't one number. It's a pattern across five signals, and the pattern tells you what to fix.Read guide →
Attribution & ROAS
8 guidesWhich channel and ad really drove the sale, and what a ROAS number does and does not tell you.
True ROAS vs platform ROASPlatform ROAS is the return an ad platform says it drove. True ROAS is the return your own tracking can actually tie to real orders. The gap between them decides where your budget should go.Read guide →First-touch, linear and last-touch ROASThe same ad can have three very different ROAS numbers depending on how credit for a sale is split across the ads a customer saw. The trick is matching the model to the job each ad is doing.Read guide →Platform over-attributionHow many more orders an ad platform claims than your own tracking can credit to it. It tells you how far to trust the numbers in Ads Manager, channel by channel.Read guide →Blended ROAS (MER)Total revenue divided by total marketing spend. It's the one ROAS no attribution model can inflate, but it can't tell you which channel or campaign earned the money.Read guide →New customer ROASRevenue from first-time buyers per rupee of ad spend. It separates ads that grow your customer base from ads that mostly sell to people who would have bought from you anyway.Read guide →Break-even ROASThe ROAS at which an ad exactly pays for itself after product, shipping and other variable costs. It comes from your own margins, so the same ROAS can be a win for one brand and a loss for another.Read guide →Marginal ROASThe revenue you get back from the next rupee of ad spend, not the average rupee. It's the number that tells you whether adding budget will make money or just make revenue.Read guide →Incremental ROASThe revenue an ad created that would not have happened without it, divided by what you spent. It separates sales the ad caused from sales it simply got credit for.Read guide →
Profit
3 guidesFrom revenue to what you actually keep: contribution margins and profit on ad spend.
CM1, CM2 and CM3Three layers of contribution margin that show what's left of each rupee of revenue after fulfilment, then ad spend, then operating costs. CM1 tells you what you can afford to spend on ads. CM2 tells you whether the ads paid off. CM3 tells you whether the business is actually making money.Read guide →POAS (profit on ad spend)The CM1 an ad brings back for every rupee it spends. Unlike ROAS, it knows which products were sold and what each one costs, so it tells you whether an ad makes money, not just revenue.Read guide →Net realised revenueThe revenue you actually keep after discounts, cancellations, RTO, returns and GST come out of gross sales. It's the honest top line, and the one every ROAS and margin calculation should start from.Read guide →
India-specific
3 guidesRTO, COD and delivery-adjusted numbers that decide whether Indian D2C ads really pay.
RTO rateThe share of shipped orders that come back to you undelivered. It moves with payment method, pincode and, most importantly for marketers, with the campaign that brought the order in.Read guide →Delivered ROASROAS counted only on orders that actually reached the customer. It takes out cancellations and RTO, and it often reorders which campaigns look best.Read guide →Effective CPAWhat you really pay in ad spend for each order that reaches a customer. It divides spend by delivered orders instead of placed orders, so cancellations and RTO show up as a higher cost.Read guide →
Customer economics
5 guidesWhat a customer costs, what they are worth, and how long it takes to earn the spend back.
New customer CAC vs blended CACNew customer CAC is what you spend to win one first-time buyer. Blended CAC spreads the same spend over every customer who ordered, including repeat buyers, so it almost always looks cheaper than growth really is.Read guide →LTV (customer lifetime value)What an average customer from a given cohort brings in over a fixed window after their first order. An LTV only means something when you say which window, whether it's revenue or margin, and which customers it covers.Read guide →LTV:CAC ratioHow many rupees a customer gives back for every rupee spent acquiring them. Built on margin and a fixed window it's one of the most useful numbers in D2C. Built on revenue over a long window, it can make a loss-making business look healthy.Read guide →CAC payback periodHow many months it takes for a new customer's contribution margin to earn back what you spent to acquire them. It's a cash question as much as a profit one: the longer the payback, the more money is tied up before growth pays for itself.Read guide →Repeat purchase rateThe share of new customers who come back and order again within a set number of days. It's the engine behind LTV, and it depends heavily on the window you pick, the product, and how you acquired the customer.Read guide →
See every one of these metrics on your own data
BooleanMaths tracks every order, merges ad, store and shipping data, and computes these numbers daily for each campaign and ad.