UK paid social, 2026
Social media ROI calculator that works out the ROAS you need before it judges the ROAS you got
Every other calculator divides revenue by ad spend and calls it a result. That number is meaningless until you know your break even, what a customer is worth to you, and how much of your reported return is genuinely incremental. This one does all three, in pounds, against 2026 UK cost benchmarks.
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Creative is the largest single lever on paid social performance, and the one this calculator cannot fix for you. The tool is free forever and works anywhere, and we take clients outside the UK as well as in it. Prices are in pounds sterling and no VAT is added. If you are ordering from outside the UK your card issuer sets the exchange rate, and anything due in your own country is outside our invoice.
The calculator
Your numbers in, the three that matter out
Everything updates as you type. The only field that changes whether this page can tell you anything useful is your gross margin, because without it nobody can say whether a campaign made money.
1. Where you are spending
2. What it costs you
Most calculators ignore both of these, which is how a losing campaign looks profitable.
3. What it produced
Lifetime value if you have it, first order value if you do not.
4. The field that decides everything
What is left after the cost of the product or delivering the service, before marketing. Without this the page can show ROAS but not profit.
Return on ad spend
0.00x
Profit and loss
Against 2026 UK benchmarks
The three numbers
ROAS on its own cannot tell you whether a campaign made money
A 3x return sounds healthy and can be a loss. A 1.8x return sounds poor and can be excellent. The difference is your margin, and almost no calculator asks for it. These are the three numbers this page adds, and each one changes what the headline figure means.
- 01The ROAS you need to break even
One divided by your gross margin. At a 60 per cent margin you need 1.67x before you have made a penny. At 30 per cent you need 3.33x, which is above what most UK brands achieve on Meta, and it means the channel may simply not work at that margin. This single sum reframes every other figure on the page.
- 02The most you can pay for a customer
Average order value multiplied by margin. That is the ceiling: pay more than it and each sale costs you money, however good the ROAS looks in the dashboard. The tool compares it against what you are actually paying, on ad spend alone and again with fees and creative included, because those are two very different numbers and only the second one is real.
- 03What your return probably is once you strip out what you would have got anyway
Platform reported ROAS counts conversions the platform can claim, not conversions it caused. Advertisers who run holdout tests, pausing a platform for a matched audience and measuring the difference, typically find true incremental return at 40 to 60 per cent of the reported figure. The tool shows that band rather than a single number, because the honest answer is a range.
None of that is a criticism of the platforms. Reported ROAS is a useful comparative number for judging one ad against another. It is simply not the number to bring to a conversation about whether the channel is worth funding, and the gap between those two uses is where most disagreements between marketing and finance actually come from.
| Platform | CPM | CPC | Typical ROAS | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TikTok | 3.00 to 8.00 | 0.30 to 1.20 | 1.5 to 2.5x | Cheapest reach, younger audiences, fastest creative burn |
| 2.00 to 8.00 | 0.15 to 1.00 | 2.5 to 4x | Home, fashion, food and weddings, with a long tail | |
| Snapchat | 3.00 to 7.00 | 0.30 to 1.10 | 1.5 to 2.8x | Impulse priced consumer products |
| X | 5.00 to 10.00 | 0.40 to 1.60 | 1.2 to 2.2x | News adjacent and B2B adjacent audiences |
| Meta | 6.50 to 12.00 | 0.50 to 2.00 | 2.5 to 4x | The reference auction. DTC e-commerce and lifestyle |
| YouTube | 10.00 to 18.00 | 0.50 to 1.50 | 1.5 to 3x | Awareness and consideration, judged on assists |
| 20.00 to 35.00 | 2.00 to 6.25 | Pipeline, not ROAS | B2B only, and only where deal size carries it |
Figures are in pounds and drawn from 2026 UK paid social cost studies. They move, and industry changes them further: within a platform, regulated and high consideration verticals such as finance and health pay a premium, while food, fashion and charity sit below the median. The calculator applies that adjustment automatically once you pick your industry, which is why the benchmark it shows you will not always match the row above.
The lever the calculator cannot pull
Three ad creatives we filmed, in three of the industries above
Benchmark studies consistently attribute most of the variance in paid social performance to creative rather than targeting, and creator style ads regularly cut cost per acquisition against polished brand ads in head to head tests. This is what we make, for brands including Headmasters and the Snaptrip Group travel portfolio. Click any to play, nothing loads until you do.
Ice cream, close up
45 seconds, built for the feed
Food and drinkA daily routine
Supplement brand, 44 seconds
Health and wellnessA salon visit
Filmed at Headmasters
BeautyAll three were filmed and edited by the two of us. The ad creative packages are on the ad creatives page, and the full library is in the UGC portfolio.
When the number comes back badly
A poor result is almost always one of four things, and they are diagnosable in an afternoon rather than a quarter. Work through them in this order, because fixing them in the wrong order wastes the most money.
First, check whether the maths can work at all
Before touching the campaign, divide one by your margin. If that number is higher than the typical ROAS for your platform and industry, the channel cannot pay for itself at your current pricing no matter how good the ads are. That is a pricing, product or margin conversation rather than a media one, and no amount of creative testing solves it. It is also the single most common reason a brand concludes that paid social does not work.
Then look at where in the funnel it breaks
The three diagnostic metrics isolate different failures. A high cost per thousand impressions with a low click through rate means the targeting or the hook is wrong. A low cost per click with a high cost per acquisition means the ads are working and the landing page is leaking. A high cost per acquisition with healthy click and conversion rates usually means the offer or the price is the problem rather than the marketing.
Then the creative, which is where most of the variance lives
Benchmark studies consistently attribute the majority of paid social performance variance to creative rather than targeting. In practice that means a library rather than an ad: several concepts in rotation, refreshed before they fatigue rather than after, and native in format rather than polished. It is also the reason a new agency often produces a lift that has nothing to do with their media buying.
And separate prospecting from retargeting before you judge anything
A blended figure hides two completely different campaigns. Cold audiences and warm audiences behave nothing alike, and a healthy blended number can conceal a retargeting campaign doing all the work while prospecting quietly loses money. Split the report before you cut a budget, or you will cut the wrong one.
Where this stops being a numbers problem
If the maths works, the funnel is sound and the creative is the weak link, that is a production problem rather than a media one. Our ad creatives are made for exactly that, and social media management UK is what it looks like when we run the whole thing. If you want the number that comes before the click, the UTM link builder makes sure the traffic is attributed properly in the first place.
Monthly plans
When you want the whole thing run properly
Small Business Social Pack
£149 per month
12 static posts, 1 platform, content creation done for you
View Small Business Social Pack- Most chosen
Rolling monthly, 2 months notice, no setup fees. All plans on the social media management page.
Frequently asked questions
For DTC e-commerce a blended figure of 3 to 4x is healthy, with prospecting typically at 2 to 3x and retargeting at 6 to 10x. But good depends entirely on your margin: at 30 per cent you need 3.33x simply to break even, so a 3x return is a loss. Work out your break even first and judge the number against that rather than against an industry average.
ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend, so 4x means four pounds of revenue for every pound of media. ROI subtracts every cost, including agency fees, creative production and the cost of the product itself, then expresses what is left as a percentage of what you invested. ROAS compares ads against each other. ROI decides whether the channel deserves funding.
Divide one by your gross profit margin expressed as a decimal. At a 60 per cent margin that is one divided by 0.6, which is 1.67x. At 40 per cent it is 2.5x, and at 25 per cent it is 4x. Anything below that figure loses money before you have paid an agency or made an advert, which is why it belongs at the top of a report rather than nowhere in it.
As a comparative number between ads, yes. As a measure of what the channel caused, no. Platforms count conversions they can claim within their own attribution window, which includes people who would have bought anyway. Advertisers who run holdout tests, pausing a platform for a matched audience and measuring the difference, typically find true incremental return at 40 to 60 per cent of the reported figure.
Roughly 3.00 to 8.00 per thousand impressions on TikTok, 6.50 to 12.00 on Meta, 2.00 to 8.00 on Pinterest, 10.00 to 18.00 on YouTube and 20.00 to 35.00 on LinkedIn. Clicks run from around 0.30 on TikTok to over 6.00 on LinkedIn. Industry shifts these considerably: finance and health pay a premium, food and fashion sit below the median.
Average order value multiplied by your gross margin, and that is a ceiling rather than a target. A 75 pound order at 60 per cent margin gives you 45 pounds of gross profit, so paying more than 45 pounds to acquire that sale loses money. If you have genuine repeat purchase data you can raise the ceiling to lifetime value, but only if you can evidence the repeat rate.
Four usual causes: audience saturation from reaching the same people repeatedly, creative fatigue as ads lose novelty, rising costs as more advertisers enter your vertical, and attribution gaps where tracking loses conversions the campaign genuinely produced. Diagnose with the cost metrics before cutting budget, because three of those four are fixable and the fourth is a measurement problem rather than a performance one.
Through cost per lead and the rate at which leads become customers. If a lead costs 25 pounds, one in ten becomes a customer and a customer is worth 800 pounds, the effective return is 800 multiplied by 0.10, divided by 25, which is 3.2x. Switch the calculator to lead generation and it does this for you. The trap is counting leads rather than customers, which flatters every campaign.
Yes, and leaving them out is the most common way a losing campaign appears profitable. A campaign at 3x on media alone can be under water once a management fee and production costs are added. This calculator shows cost per acquisition twice, on ad spend and again on everything, and the second figure is the one a finance team should be given.
Not on its own, and chasing cheap clicks is a common way to waste money. A low cost per click paired with a high cost per acquisition means you are buying traffic that does not convert, which usually points at the landing page or the offer rather than the ads. Each metric isolates a different part of the funnel, and only the combination diagnoses anything.
More than targeting, according to the benchmark studies, which consistently attribute most of the performance variance to the creative rather than the audience settings. Creator style content that looks native regularly outperforms polished brand advertising in head to head tests on the short form platforms. That is why a new agency often produces a lift that has little to do with their media buying.
No. Everything runs in your browser with no sign up, no email field and no request to any server, so real trading figures are safe to enter. The text download is generated on your device too.
Our channels
If you would rather watch than read
Velena and Dragos
Travel, food and influencer content from the two of us, and the channel where the long form work lives.
Open the channelVelena Lifestyle
The agency channel. UGC examples, client work and finished campaign videos.
Open the channel
Methodology, and what this calculator cannot know
The formulas. ROAS is revenue divided by ad spend. ROI is net profit divided by total cost, where total cost includes ad spend, fees and creative, and net profit applies your gross margin to revenue first. Break even ROAS is one divided by margin. Maximum cost per acquisition is average order value multiplied by margin. Every one was checked by hand against a worked example before this page shipped.
The benchmarks. Platform cost ranges are drawn from 2026 UK paid social cost studies and are kept as ranges rather than collapsed into single figures, because the underlying reports differ considerably in method and a single number would be false precision. Industry multipliers reflect the documented pattern that regulated and high consideration verticals pay a premium, and are our own judgement of that shape rather than a published table.
The incrementality band. The 40 to 60 per cent range comes from published guidance for advertisers running holdout tests, and is shown as a band rather than a figure for the same reason. It is an indication, not a measurement of your account. The only way to know your real incrementality is to run a holdout test yourself.
How it was checked. A worked example was verified by hand across fourteen outputs, the lead generation path was checked against a separate worked example, and 3,328 combinations of platform, industry, spend level and margin were swept for non finite values, negative results and inverted ranges. All returned zero, including on entirely empty input.
What it cannot know. Your repeat purchase rate, your true attribution, your seasonality, or whether the revenue you entered is tracked revenue or actual bank deposits. Those differ more than most brands expect. Treat the output as a decision framework rather than a report.
The rest of the free tools
Ten tools, all built for the UK market, all free with no sign up and no email capture. Nothing here is a trial.
- UTM link builderTag links properly so this calculator has real numbers to work with
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- Instagram engagement rate calculatorYour real rate against 2026 UK benchmarks, by industry and follower tier
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- The whole libraryEvery free tool in one place, with new ones added regularly
Client reviews
What clients say, word for word
“Velena Lifestyle have been a breath of fresh air for our social media accounts. Their professionalism and knowledge have supported us massively.”
Sean Thompson, Head of Marketing, Snaptrip Group. Google review, 5.0.“Fantastic service. Been a client for 3 years now and have seen fantastic results, increased viewers, followers and viral videos. Copywriting was on point and has been used in magazines like Conde Nast, Timeout and more.”
Darrell Johnston, Owner, No Escape London and Purgatory Bar. Google review, 5.0.“If you want a self-starter with the ability to think strategically and minimize the time between ideation and creation, Velena is your go-to. She has done a phenomenal job with managing our UGC portfolio, curating and creating our content.”
Naila Abbasova, Enara Wellness. Google review, 5.0.Every review is reproduced word for word. Read them all on the reviews page.
The two of us
Who built this calculator
Velena Nikolova
Co-Founder and Creative Director
Velena Nikolova is Creative Director and the person on camera. A lifestyle creator featured in Women's Health, she films and edits the ad creative that moves these numbers. More on the about page.
Dragos Nistor
Co-Founder and Business Strategist
Dragos Nistor handles strategy, reporting and paid performance across the accounts we run, and built the model behind this calculator. Named a LinkedIn Top Entrepreneurship Voice in 2024. More on the case studies.
The calculator finds the problem. Creative usually fixes it
If the maths works and the funnel is sound, the weak link is almost always the advert itself, and that is a production problem rather than a media one. We have worked with 100+ brands since 2022 and film and edit every deliverable ourselves. We reply within one business day, and nothing is filmed until the brief is agreed in writing.