Good ROAS for Google Ads (Non-Brand): Last Touch vs First Touch

On adtribute attribution, the median DTC brand in our panel earned 2.72 in gross revenue per euro of non-brand Google Ads spend on last touch and 4.53 on first touch in August 2026, with brand search excluded. The middle half of brands sits between 1.99 and 4.73 on last touch and between 3.18 and 8.06 on first touch. By industry, the last-touch median ranges from 1.82 in health & nutrition to 3.58 in fashion & accessories. Google's own reporting shows a median non-brand ROAS of 2.37 for the same brands. A good ROAS is one above your break-even ROAS on the model you trust, with room left for fixed costs.

On independent attribution, 4 is above the last-touch median of 2.72 for non-brand Google Ads. Google's own reporting shows a lower non-brand median (2.37), because it hands much of the credit to brand search, so a non-brand 4 in Google Ads is strong. Always compare ROAS figures from the same attribution source.

On last touch the median moved from 3.19 a year earlier to 2.72 in August 2026, on first touch from 4.80 to 4.53. Month-to-month moves are noisy, so judge your own ROAS against the same month a year earlier and on the same attribution model.

Google Ads expresses target ROAS in percent: a ROAS of 4.0 is 400 percent. The non-brand median in our panel is 2.72, or 272 percent, on last touch and 453 percent on first touch. A 200 percent ROAS (2.0) is below the last-touch median of 2.72.

Start from your break-even ROAS and translate it into Google's own reporting, because target ROAS bids on the conversion value Google reports, not on independent attribution. For the non-brand campaigns in our panel Google reports a median 2.37, against 2.72 on adtribute last touch. Set the target from that gap, then check monthly that independent ROAS stays above break-even.

Brand search captures people who already know the brand and type its name into Google. It earns very high ROAS without creating much new demand: over the last twelve months brand campaigns took a median 22 percent of these brands' Google spend but earned 51 percent of the revenue adtribute attributes to Google, at a median ROAS of about 16. The non-brand figure is the return on spend that has to find demand rather than collect it.

Last touch credits the channel that closed the sale, first touch the channel that started the journey. Google's first-touch median (4.53) is about 1.7 times its last-touch median (2.72), because generic search, Shopping and Performance Max often start journeys that email, brand search or retargeting close later. Judging Google on last touch alone undervalues it.

It is aggregated from a subset of adtribute customers, all direct-to-consumer brands with adtribute tracking live for the whole window and continuous non-brand Google spend, so the lines move because performance moved, not because the panel changed. Both models are applied identically to every brand. Only medians and quartile bands are published, never a single brand's value, and the series updates every month.