Cossa op-ed: a ROAS of 4 can still be a loss until it hits the P&L

August 26, 2026 · cossaru

A revenue base of 1 million rubles at ROAS 4 looks profitable in an ad dashboard, but Alexander Sosnovsky's Cossa.ru column walks through where that revenue actually goes: 55% to cost of goods sold leaves 450,000 rubles, a further 250,000 rubles in ad spend leaves 200,000 rubles, and returns, logistics, marketplace commissions and card processing fees push the channel into a loss. Sosnovsky, an outsourced marketing director, sets the break-even ROAS by margin: a business running at 25% margin needs ROAS of 4 to 5, while a 60% margin business breaks even at ROAS 2. He illustrates the point with a building materials manufacturer whose owner wanted to scale a category with rising demand; a look at the unit economics showed margin falling and ad costs rising inside that same category, so Sosnovsky told the owner to stop funding it. A competitor scaled the same category anyway and ended up in the red, while across the wider project, shifting budget toward margin-positive channels cut cost per lead in half, lifted leads 2.3 times and pushed ROI above 300%.

Attribution built only on cabinet ROAS can hide a channel that is quietly losing money, since returns often land weeks after the sale is counted and repeat purchases, which Sosnovsky says can account for up to 70% of revenue, are rarely credited to the ad that started the relationship. A media plan ranked by revenue-based ROAS risks scaling the channel that looks strongest on screen while cutting the one that actually funds the business. The fix Sosnovsky describes, one profit and loss table per channel covering spend, deals, margin and net contribution, is the same discipline that separates revenue attribution from profit attribution in server-side measurement.