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- Lesson 4
Lesson 4 of 10Unit economicsWithout it: unscalableDone
Unit economics: why they make or break campaign success
Without solid unit economics, your campaigns can't scale. They decide your maximum CPC, whether your targets are realistic and how competitive you can be. This lesson covers the four metrics per business type (ecommerce, lead gen, SaaS), the warning signs and a real case where one order needed a 758% break-even ROAS.
- 40 min video
- 44 slides
- 1 resource
- 5-question quiz
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In this lesson
- Unit economics set your maximum CPC, decide whether CPA or ROAS targets are realistic and dictate your budget.
- Ecommerce: break-even ROAS = 1 / gross margin. At a 40% margin, that's a ROAS of 2.5 (250%).
- Lead gen: target CPL = deal profit x lead-to-sale rate. SaaS: aim for an LTV:CAC of at least 3:1.
- Poor unit economics can't be solved with Google Ads optimizations. Fix them at the source.
Chapters
Slides
44 slides, to browse or download as a PDF
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1 resource for this lesson, plus the slides as a PDF
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5 questions to check you got it
Get free accessFrom the lesson
In this lesson, I'm going to zoom in on unit economics and why they make or break campaign success. You will learn why they are so important, and I will give you lead gen, SaaS and ecommerce examples.
Without proper unit economics, your campaigns will become unscalable. And if you ever wondered why some of your competitors are able to dominate the search engine result pages while you are getting hardly any traction, that is often due to their unit economics, and your business's unit economics.
Read the unit economics chapter
The written version in the Google Ads Success Formula guide, updated for 2026.