Why ROAS Is Declining for Most Indian Brands
Return on Ad Spend has been declining for most Indian brands on Meta and Google over the past two years. Ad costs are rising, competition in most categories has increased, and many brands are running the same campaign structures they set up in 2021. The brands maintaining or improving ROAS have made three specific changes: better creative testing, tighter audience segmentation, and a full-funnel approach rather than bottom-of-funnel-only.
The Full-Funnel Framework for Performance Marketing
Top of funnel (Awareness) — Reach new ICP audiences. Objective: brand recall and content engagement. Budget: 20–30%.
Middle of funnel (Consideration) — Retarget engagers, website visitors, video viewers. Objective: product page visits, lead form fills, add-to-cart. Budget: 30–40%.
Bottom of funnel (Conversion) — Retarget cart abandoners, product page visitors, partial form fills. Objective: purchase, appointment, sign-up. Budget: 30–40%.
The most common mistake: spending 90% of budget at the bottom of the funnel and wondering why CAC keeps rising. The top and middle feed the bottom. Without them, retargeting pools shrink and costs increase.
Creative Testing: The Highest-Leverage Activity in Performance Marketing
Test 3–5 creative concepts per campaign simultaneously
Isolate variables — test one element at a time (image vs video, headline A vs headline B)
Let data decide — run each variant for 3–5 days with a minimum of 1,000 impressions before judging
Retire underperformers fast, scale winners immediately
Refresh creative every 3–4 weeks — ad fatigue is real and measurable
Google Ads for Indian Brands: Where to Focus
Search campaigns for high-intent keywords — people searching for your product by name have the highest purchase intent
Shopping campaigns for D2C e-commerce — drives product discovery for visually strong products
YouTube pre-roll for brand awareness — underused by Indian brands, highly effective for recall at low CPM
LinkedIn Ads for B2B Performance Marketing
LinkedIn ads in India are expensive per click but generate significantly higher-quality leads for B2B targets. Key: targeting by job title + company size + industry + seniority. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms convert 2–3x better than sending paid traffic to a landing page. B2B brands using LinkedIn alongside Meta consistently achieve better blended CAC.
Measuring Performance Marketing Correctly
Track the right metrics at the right funnel stage. Top: CPM, video completion rate, reach. Middle: CTR, cost per landing page view. Bottom: ROAS, CPA, cost per qualified lead. Do not judge a top-of-funnel campaign by its ROAS. Do not judge a bottom-of-funnel campaign by its reach.
Eyelevel manages full-funnel performance marketing
Is your ROAS dropping? We build full-funnel paid acquisition systems for SaaS, D2C, and B2B brands.
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