CTR, CPC, or ROAS: Which KPI is important for your ads?

When you start advertising, you're overwhelmed by numbers. You see percentages, graphs, and dashboards full of abbreviations. CTR, CPC, ROSE. For an entrepreneur, it often feels like you have to learn a foreign language before you know if your ad works at all. And yet, there is logic behind it. It's all about understanding which number brings you closer to your goal.

Take CTR, the Click-Through Rate. This tells you how many people click through after seeing your ad. Imagine a thousand people watching your campaign pass by and fifty of them clicking through, you have a CTR of five percent. Sounds great, because it means that your message appeals to you. However, it does not say whether someone also buys afterwards. CTR is therefore particularly useful in the early stages, when you want to test whether your ad even grabs attention.

Then there is CPC, the Cost Per Click. This number shows how much you pay for each visitor who clicks on your ad. In theory, a low CPC sounds great. You get a lot of traffic for little money. But imagine that all those visitors then buy nothing. Then you've wasted your budget after all, no matter how low the CPCook was. So CPC is useful to keep an eye on, but never the finish line of your analysis.

And that's when ROAS comes into the picture: Return On Ad Spend. For most companies, this is the KPI that really matters. ROAS tells you how much turnover you earn back for each euro you put into ads. Suppose you invest a thousand euros and you generate four thousand euros in turnover, you have a ROAS of four. This is concrete, tangible and directly linked to growth. In other words, ROAS doesn't just tell you whether your ad is liked, but whether it actually makes money.

The pitfall for many entrepreneurs is that they get stuck in CTR and CPC. It quickly provides a sense of control, because the numbers move daily. But real profit only comes when you learn how to look at ROAS. That is exactly what we aim for at BigBananas. Of course, we think it's important that your ads get clicks and that your budget is spent efficiently. But ultimately, it's about results: a content and advertising machine that provides structural profit.

So the next time you scroll through your dashboard, ask yourself: Am I looking at numbers that make me feel good, or numbers that make my business grow? CTR and CPC are signals. ROAS is the truth.