How Much Should I Spend on Ads? A Sane Framework

The honest answer to "how much should I spend" is: it depends on what a customer is worth to you. Budgets pulled from thin air either starve good campaigns or pour money into bad ones.

Start from customer value

Know your average customer value and how much of it you can afford to spend acquiring one. That number, your target cost per acquisition, anchors everything.

Budget to learn, then to scale

Early spend buys data, not just sales. Set a test budget big enough to exit the learning phase, then scale only what proves profitable.

Watch payback, not just ROAS

For repeat-purchase businesses, how fast you recover acquisition cost matters as much as the headline return. Fast payback lets you reinvest sooner.

The takeaway

Set budgets from your own economics. The right number is the one that hits your cost-per-acquisition target with room to scale.