Why ROAS Drops When You Scale
At ₹30K/day, your ads are shown to the most responsive 2-3% of your target audience. When you increase to ₹1L/day, Meta has to reach less responsive audiences to spend your budget. Result: higher CPM, lower CTR, lower conversion rate.
This is normal. The question isn’t ‘how to maintain ROAS at scale’ — it’s ‘how to scale profitably despite lower ROAS.’
The Scaling Framework
Rule 1: Scale Spend, Not ROAS
Target metric shifts at scale:
Daily Spend Target ROAS Why Under ₹10K 5-8x Small audience, easy to be efficient ₹10K-30K 3.5-5x Still targeting responsive audiences ₹30K-1L 2.5-4x Broader reach, lower efficiency is expected ₹1L-3L 2-3x Significant broad reach. Focus on total profit, not ROAS. ₹3L+ 1.8-2.5x Enterprise scale. Brand building + direct response.
Key insight: ₹1L/day at 2.5x ROAS = ₹2.5L revenue = ₹1.5L gross margin. ₹30K/day at 5x ROAS = ₹1.5L revenue = ₹90K gross margin. Lower ROAS, higher absolute profit.
Rule 2: Scale Budget 20% Every 3-5 Days
Never double budget overnight — this resets the learning phase Increase by 15-20% every 3-5 days If performance dips after increase, hold budget steady for 5 days before making changes Only scale winning ad sets — don’t spread budget to underperformers Rule 3: Horizontal Scaling > Vertical Scaling
Vertical scaling = increasing budget on existing ad sets. Works until ₹30-50K/day per ad set.Horizontal scaling = duplicating winning ad sets with different audiences, creatives, or placements. Works beyond ₹50K/day.At ₹1L+/day, you should have 3-5 active campaigns with 2-4 ad sets each, not one mega campaign. Rule 4: Creative Volume Is the #1 Scaling Lever
At ₹1L+/day, you need 15-20 new creatives per week entering your testing pipeline Winning creatives fatigue faster at high spend (2 weeks vs 4 weeks at lower spend) Diversify creative formats: UGC, founder videos, product demos, carousels, static The brand that produces the most quality creative wins at scale The Scaling Checklist
☐ Current ROAS is profitable at current spend for 2+ weeks ☐ At least 5 proven winning creatives in rotation ☐ 10+ new creatives ready for testing pipeline ☐ Retargeting audiences are large enough (10K+ website visitors in last 30 days) ☐ Conversion tracking is accurate (Pixel + CAPI verified) ☐ Landing pages are optimized (sub-3-second load time) ☐ Checkout conversion rate is above 2% ☐ Budget increase plan: 20% every 3-5 days When NOT to Scale
If you don’t have new creatives ready — Scaling without fresh creative = accelerated fatigue = rapid ROAS decline.If your website can’t handle more traffic — Slow site at higher traffic = worse conversion = wasted ad spend.If your operations can’t handle more orders — Scaling ads before scaling operations = shipping delays = bad reviews = long-term damage.During festive season CPM spikes — Scale during normal periods when CPMs are 30-40% lower. Maintain (don’t increase) during festive peaks.Need Help Scaling Ads?
At Growww Tech, we scale Meta and Google ad campaigns for Indian D2C brands — from ₹10K/day to ₹3L+/day. Let’s scale your ads profitably .
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