Protect your ecommerce with Adefence

Gross ROAS counts the value of each order as recorded at purchase without looking at what happens afterward. But an order can be returned, canceled, refunded, or even disputed through a chargeback, or have such a low margin that it generates almost no profit. If campaigns optimize only for gross revenue, they may reward orders that look excellent on paper but actually earn little or nothing. You therefore need to look at what remains after returns, refunds, and margins, not just the initial order total.

NetROAS measures advertising campaign returns based on net value—what actually remains after returns, refunds, and other costs—instead of the order's gross revenue. It matters because two orders of equal value can have very different profitability once these factors are deducted. Adefence helps your ecommerce campaigns distinguish orders that artificially inflate ROAS from those that generate real profit. This directs advertising budget toward what truly creates business value.

Invalid traffic does more than waste money on clicks: it can generate fake orders, use stolen credit cards to test whether they work, or fuel fraud such as refund abuse, switch fraud, and chargebacks. This means the financial harm can extend far beyond advertising budget into inventory, logistics, and payment management. Adefence works to recognize these suspicious patterns as early as possible, catching the problem before it becomes a concrete cost to your ecommerce business.

No, and this is a common misconception: a campaign can still reach its overall ROAS target even if some budget is spent on products that generate little or no profit. The average conceals differences among products, making everything appear fine when it is not. Moving to a NetROAS approach, Adefence reveals these imbalances with more accurate data for each product segment. You can then see where budget is really paying off and where corrections are needed.

Advertising platforms normally see only the moment of purchase, not what happens later, such as a return or cancellation. By connecting these data to campaigns through Adefence, bidding receives a signal closer to the real net value created by each order. Without this information, the algorithm would keep optimizing on gross revenue recorded at checkout even when the order ultimately generates no profit. Over time, bidding learns to bring in more genuinely profitable orders.