ROAS is the most widely used performance metric in Indian D2C marketing — and it is routinely, systematically wrong. Not because the platforms are lying, but because Meta's reported ROAS and Google's reported ROAS are each measuring something real, just not what Indian brands need to measure to make sound scaling decisions.
The three distortions are specific to India's e-commerce context: COD return-to-origin rates that remove real revenue after the conversion event fires, iOS attribution gaps that cause platforms to claim credit for conversions they didn't drive, and cross-platform double-counting where both Meta and Google claim the same purchase. Together, these three factors can inflate a reported 4x ROAS to a true 2.2–2.8x — the difference between a profitable and an unprofitable campaign.
Distortion 1: COD Return-to-Origin (RTO) Rates
When an Indian customer places a COD order, Meta's pixel fires a Purchase event at the moment of checkout completion. Google's conversion tag does the same. The platforms report this as a confirmed purchase with full order value attributed to their respective campaigns.
But in Indian D2C, a COD order is not a sale — it is an intent to buy. The actual sale is confirmed only when the delivery agent hands over the package and collects cash. If the customer is unavailable, refuses the delivery, or was never genuinely interested (a significant segment of impulsive COD orderers), the shipment comes back as an RTO.
Fashion and apparel: 22–35%
Electronics and gadgets: 8–15%
Beauty and personal care: 15–25%
Home and kitchen: 12–20%
Health supplements: 18–28%
Average across all D2C categories: ~22%
Average RTO for prepaid orders: 3–6%
What this means for ROAS: if your Meta-reported ROAS is 4x and your COD order share is 60% with a 25% RTO rate, approximately 15% of all your "purchases" are actually RTOs that will never generate revenue. Your true revenue is 85% of reported revenue, which drops your true ROAS to approximately 3.4x — before addressing any other distortion.
Distortion 2: iOS Attribution Gap
Apple's App Tracking Transparency (ATT) framework, which became mandatory from iOS 14.5, means that approximately 60–75% of Indian iOS users have opted out of cross-app tracking. For Meta specifically, this means that purchases made by opted-out iOS users after seeing a Meta ad are either not attributed to Meta at all, or are attributed via modelled conversion estimates that may be inaccurate.
The counterintuitive effect: Meta's reported ROAS is not consistently under-reported due to iOS — it is inconsistently reported. Meta uses statistical modelling to fill in the attribution gap, but this modelled attribution is not always accurate, and it varies by campaign, audience type and creative format. Some campaigns have their ROAS overstated by modelled attribution; others are understated.
The reliable signal is the gap between Meta-reported conversions and your actual Shopify or WooCommerce orders. For most Indian D2C brands, Meta reports 30–60% more purchases than Shopify records from Meta-identified sessions. The difference is a combination of iOS attribution modelling, cross-device journeys and view-through attribution — where Meta claims credit for users who saw but did not click an ad.
Distortion 3: Cross-Platform Double-Counting
The third and most commonly overlooked distortion: when a customer sees a Meta ad, searches on Google, clicks a Google Shopping ad and purchases, both Meta and Google claim credit for the sale. Meta claims it via view-through or click attribution; Google claims it via last-click. Your total reported revenue across platforms may be 1.4–1.8x your actual revenue.
According to a 2025 study by Merkle India, Indian D2C brands running concurrent Meta and Google campaigns reported cross-platform attribution overlap of 35–55% — meaning 35–55% of conversions were claimed by both platforms simultaneously.
The True ROAS Formula for Indian D2C Brands
True ROAS requires a calculation that starts from your actual business data, not platform-reported data:
Step 1 — Confirmed Revenue:
Confirmed Revenue = Total GMV × (1 − RTO Rate)
Where: RTO Rate = (COD share × COD RTO%) + (Prepaid share × Prepaid RTO%)
Step 2 — Total Ad Spend:
Total Spend = Meta Spend + Google Spend + Marketplace Ad Spend (all channels combined)
Step 3 — True ROAS (= MER):
True ROAS = Confirmed Revenue ÷ Total Ad Spend
Key principle: Always use Total Ad Spend across all platforms as the denominator. Never sum platform-reported revenues — use only your order management system as revenue source.
Worked Example with INR Figures
Let's work through a realistic example for an Indian D2C fashion brand:
Monthly ad spend: ₹3,00,000 (₹2,00,000 Meta + ₹1,00,000 Google)
Meta-reported revenue: ₹12,00,000 (6x ROAS reported by Meta)
Google-reported revenue: ₹6,00,000 (6x ROAS reported by Google)
Total platform-reported revenue: ₹18,00,000
Actual Shopify revenue (all channels): ₹9,80,000
Step 1: Remove RTO impact
COD order share: 55% | RTO rate on COD: 28%
Prepaid order share: 45% | RTO rate on prepaid: 4%
Blended RTO rate: (55% × 28%) + (45% × 4%) = 15.4% + 1.8% = 17.2%
Confirmed revenue: ₹9,80,000 × (1 − 0.172) = ₹8,11,440
Step 2: Calculate True ROAS
True ROAS = ₹8,11,440 ÷ ₹3,00,000 = 2.70x
vs. Meta-reported 6x and Google-reported 6x
The reported figures overstated true ROAS by 122%
This is not an extreme example — it is a typical Indian D2C fashion brand with normal COD rates, normal RTO rates, and normal cross-platform attribution overlap. The 2.70x true ROAS may still be profitable depending on product margins, but it requires fundamentally different scaling decisions than a 6x ROAS would justify.
Building a True ROAS Dashboard
To track true ROAS systematically, you need to connect three data sources:
The MER Alternative: Simpler and More Reliable
Many Indian D2C CFOs and growth leads have moved away from per-platform ROAS entirely in favour of MER (Marketing Efficiency Ratio), also called blended ROAS:
MER = Total Confirmed Revenue (all channels, RTO-adjusted) ÷ Total Ad Spend (all platforms)
MER sidesteps the attribution question entirely — it doesn't matter which platform gets credit, because you're measuring total revenue against total spend. For Indian D2C brands running concurrent Meta, Google and marketplace campaigns, MER is a cleaner, more actionable metric than per-platform ROAS.
Healthy MER benchmarks for Indian D2C vary by category and margin structure: 3.5–5x for fashion and apparel, 5–8x for beauty and personal care, 4–6x for health supplements, and 6–10x for digital or low-RTO product categories. Your target MER must exceed your cost-of-goods ratio by enough to cover operating costs and deliver target profit.
Reducing the Gap Between Reported and True ROAS
Beyond just measuring true ROAS accurately, you can actively narrow the gap between reported and true ROAS by addressing its root causes:
- Reduce RTO rate: NDR (Non-Delivery Report) calling before dispatch, COD confirmation WhatsApp messages, and address verification all reduce RTO rates by 3–8 percentage points on average for Indian D2C brands
- Shift COD to prepaid: Offering a 2–3% discount for prepaid orders, or a small gift-with-purchase for UPI payment, shifts order mix toward lower-RTO prepaid and improves confirmed revenue per reported order
- Implement Meta CAPI: Better attribution data from Conversions API means Meta's algorithm optimises toward genuine purchasers rather than high-signal-but-low-quality events, improving the quality of attributed conversions over time
For a complete guide to improving your attribution foundation, see our post on Meta Conversions API setup for Indian stores. And for how true ROAS thinking should inform your agency relationships, see our guide on scaling a performance marketing agency in India.
AdsSarthi's attribution engine integrates with Shiprocket, Delhivery and Ecom Express to calculate RTO-adjusted true ROAS automatically — giving you a single number you can actually trust. Get a free attribution audit to see how far your current reported ROAS is from your true business performance.