WARC DC Series on Metrics & Measurement: Understanding ACOS (Attributed Cost of Sales)

Jo Bowman and Gregory Grudzinski

ACOS, or Attributed Cost of Sales, excludes those sales that did not come from the ad, and counts only revenue generated as a direct result of a person seeing and clicking on an ad.

What’s ACOS?

This is Attributed Cost of Sales, and it’s a way of measuring the effectiveness of pay-per-click campaigns on an e-commerce platform.

It’s similar to ROAS (Return on Advertising Spend) in some respects, but there’s an important difference: it excludes those sales that did not come from the ad, and counts only revenue generated as a direct result of a person seeing and clicking on an ad.

ACOS is calculated by dividing the amount spent on advertising by the revenue it generates, and then turning it into a percentage. For example, spending $1,000 on a campaign that directly brings...

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