Why ROAS is lying to you (and what metric to use instead)

Benoit Vatere, Chief Media Officer at Liquid Death, has a message for anyone optimizing their media spend on return on ad spend (ROAS): You're going to fail. 

Here's what to do instead. 

How Liquid Death actually sells water

• ROAS is a lie — pair it with new-to-brand % to get a real signal on incrementality. Meta may tell you that you spent $1 and made $3 — but you might have made that $3 anyway. If your ROAS is high and a high percentage of buyers are new to the brand, that's a real signal. If new-to-brand is low, you're just taking credit for sales that would've happened without you.

• Stop using Meta for awareness. Meta won't let you control frequency, and at 1–1.5x per week, you're invisible in a sea of content. Use CTV, radio, and podcasts for awareness, where you can control the frequency. Use Meta and retail platforms for consideration and conversion, where the algorithm can actually optimize toward a click or purchase.

   

• If you only chase conversion from day one, you'll hit a wall. Every brand has a "golden core" — a finite group of people primed to buy fast. Optimize only for CAC/LTV and you'll exhaust that group quickly, then watch your costs spike. Liquid Death invested in awareness early, even when it was impossible to measure. That's what feeds the funnel long-term.