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A healthy MER can still be unprofitable

Most MER calculators stop at revenue divided by spend. This one also asks whether that number actually clears the floor your margin requires.

Your numbers

$

From your commerce or billing system, for the same period as spend below.

$

Blended across every channel — platform invoices, not platform-reported revenue.

%

After cost of goods, before marketing spend.

Your blended MER

4.42x

Total revenue ÷ total marketing spend.

Break-even MER

1.82x

The floor set by your margin.

Contribution after spend

$136,000

At 4.42x you're above the 1.82x floor your margin requires — marketing is contributing roughly $136,000 after spend. A MER above break-even doesn't mean stop scaling, but it does mean the current blend is profitable.

Calculated in your browser — nothing is sent anywhere, and nothing is stored.

How it works

The maths, so it isn't a black box.

01

It computes your blended MER

Total revenue divided by total marketing spend across every channel, for the same period — the single blended-efficiency number most CFOs actually ask for, distinct from platform-reported ROAS.

02

Then derives the break-even MER your margin requires

1 divided by gross margin, expressed as a ratio. A business at 30% margin needs a MER over roughly 3.3x just to break even; one at 60% margin clears the floor at 1.67x. The same MER means something completely different depending on this number.

03

And shows the dollar gap either way

Contribution after spend — what marketing actually added to or subtracted from the business, in real dollars, not just a ratio that's easy to misread in isolation.

Questions about this calculation

ROAS is typically measured per channel or per platform, often from platform-reported attribution data that overstates performance. MER is a blended, business-level number — total revenue over total spend, from your own revenue and billing systems — that can't be inflated by any single platform's attribution model.

Terms used here

MERROASMarginal CACContribution Margin

Other calculators

Break-Even ROASFind the ROAS floor below which every order loses money.CAC PaybackBlended CAC, payback period, and a horizon-capped LTV:CAC ratio.Conversion Lift ROIWhat a conversion rate improvement is worth versus buying the same revenue with ads.Media BudgetWork backwards from a revenue target to the ad spend it actually requires.Sample SizeFind how long a test must run before you're allowed to look at it.Creative VolumeFind out whether your creative output can outrun fatigue.Churn ImpactSee what a small churn improvement does to lifetime value and your bid ceiling.Shipping ThresholdFind a threshold that lifts order value without absorbing more shipping than it earns.In-House vs AgencyCompare a fully-loaded salary against a retainer, not just the headline numbers.Content Break-EvenFind the month a content programme repays what it cost to produce.Discount Break-EvenFind how much extra volume a discount must produce just to stand still.Pipeline ModelWork backwards from a revenue target to the leads and spend it implies.Holdout DesignerSize an incrementality test before you spend real revenue running it.Organic Traffic ValueWhat your organic sessions would cost to buy back via paid search — the number that justifies an SEO retainer.

Where we do this work

Paid AdsAnalytics & MeasurementDigital Marketing
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