ROAS SPECIAL EP2: ROAS is a Toxic Love Language

ROAS SPECIAL EP2: ROAS is a Toxic Love Language

ROAS. It's everywhere. In media plans. In ad consoles. In AOP meetings. In strategic decks. And, apparently, in the emotional lives of marketing and sales teams.

In this episode of The Retail Media Therapy Guide to Everything You Wanted to Know About ROAS But Were Afraid to Ask, Viv and Colin are joined by Mrunal Bhagat, Retail Media Lead at Pearson, to tackle the uncomfortable question:

Has retail media been speaking ROAS for so long that we've forgotten how to speak business?

Mrunal's answer is provocative: ROAS is a fraud metric.

Sales teams live in the commercial world - EPOS and sales performance. Marketing teams live in ad consoles and media metrics. These worlds don't always collide. So what happens? They find something they can both understand: ROAS. As Mrunal puts it, it's the common denominator. Viv has an even better description: ROAS is the shoutiest person in the room. And if ROAS were a romantic partner? A toxic love language. Constantly sliding into your DMs asking: "Hey. Where are you? Want to talk about ROAS?" Meanwhile, incrementality and other potentially useful measures are sitting quietly in the corner, being left on read.

IN this episode, we talk about:

Why ROAS became the common language between marketing and sales Why Mrunal calls ROAS a "fraud metric" The difference between a post-media metric and a commercial decision framework The Trojan Horse model Customer wallet share Incrementality Share of model: Why AI and LLMs are changing product discovery Why today's purchase journey looks nothing like it did 20 years ago Why we need measurement frameworks designed for the future - not just better rear-view mirrors

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