Two tools for paid acquisition planning. The calculator turns your margin and target into a break-even ROAS, a maximum CPA, and a forecast of what a given ad budget should return. The matrix compares the four platforms you'll actually consider so you can pick where to start before you spend a dollar.
Enter your unit economics on the left and your planned ad spend on the right. The calculator returns the ROAS you need just to break even, what a healthy target looks like with margin, the most you can pay to acquire a customer, and the revenue/orders/profit a given budget should produce at your target.
Numbers below are 2026 ecommerce medians from Hawky.ai, InsightIQ, Foundry CRO, and Billo. They are starting reference points — your real numbers will diverge by category, creative quality, and audience. Use these to pick a starting platform mix and a sane minimum-viable test budget per channel.
| Platform | Typical CPM | Typical CPC | Median ROAS | Min Useful Test Budget | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
Meta (FB + IG)
Advantage+ Shopping
|
$8 – $20
IG Reels: $12 – $14
|
$0.90 – $2.50 |
2.5x – 3.0x
Retargeting: 3.6x
|
$2,500 / mo
~$80/day, 30 days
|
Visual lifestyle, beauty, apparel, home, gifting. Workhorse for ecom. |
|
Google Ads
Search + Shopping + PMax
|
$2 – $8
Display only
|
$0.80 – $3.50
Branded: $0.20
|
3.5x – 4.5x
Shopping: 5.0x · PMax: 4.0x
|
$1,500 / mo
~$50/day, 30 days
|
High-intent search demand. Anything someone Googles by name or category. |
|
TikTok Ads
Spark + Video Shopping
|
$6 – $10 | $0.50 – $1.50 |
1.4x – 2.0x
Value-bid: 2.25x
|
$3,000 / mo
Needs creative volume
|
Impulse-buy under $75, Gen Z/millennial, demo-style UGC. Discovery channel. |
|
Pinterest Ads
Product Pins, Idea Pins
|
$3 – $7 | $0.30 – $1.50 | 2.0x – 3.5x | $1,000 / mo | Home, fashion, wedding, food, DIY. Long planning-cycle purchases. |
|
Reddit Ads
Conversation Placements
|
$0.50 – $15
Wide variance
|
$0.40 – $1.20 |
2.3x – 4.7x
Post-2025 algo update
|
$1,500 / mo | Niche, technical, hobbyist. Where community-native creative wins. |
|
LinkedIn Ads
Sponsored Content, Lead Gen
|
$25 – $60
Highest of any channel
|
$5 – $12 |
1.5x – 2.5x
B2B pipeline view
|
$3,000 / mo | B2B services, enterprise SaaS, recruiting. Skip for consumer products. |
|
Email (Klaviyo)
Owned channel
|
— | — |
36x – 42x
Owned audience
|
$0 – $150 / mo
Free to 250 contacts
|
Repeat purchase, abandoned cart, post-purchase upsell. Set up day one. |
CPM = cost per 1,000 impressions. CPC = cost per click. ROAS = revenue ÷ ad spend. "Min useful test budget" is what it takes to get out of the platform's learning phase and generate enough conversions to evaluate; below this, you're just buying noise. Email ROAS looks absurd because it's an owned channel — you're not buying impressions, you're harvesting an audience you already paid to acquire.
A 4x ROAS is great for a 25% margin dropshipper but mediocre for a 70% margin skincare brand. Use these as sanity checks once you know your category — and remember the platform-level medians above blend across all categories, so your number can be very different.
Once we've picked a hero product and we're ready for our first ad dollar, this is where we'd start the test. The "70/30 split" between high-intent (Google) and demand-gen (Meta/TikTok) is the prevailing 2026 default for ecom — but the right mix depends on the category. Adjust upward toward Meta/TikTok if the product is visual and impulse-driven; upward toward Google if people Google the problem.
The calculator above is the plan. The matrix below it is the map. The thing that actually keeps a paid acquisition operation healthy is checking the gap between plan and reality every single day — and that's pure recurring agentic work.
Human pattern: once a week, four of us look at CoWork's report for ~30 minutes, decide budget shifts, and approve them inside each platform. Daily monitoring is the agent's job.