blog · May 23, 2026

How much should I spend on Meta ads as a % of revenue?

Most healthy DTC brands spend 8-15% of revenue on Meta. Sub-8% you're under-acquiring; above 18% you're either burning cash or in a paid-heavy launch phase.

The healthy band

For brands at $30K-$500K MRR doing primarily paid acquisition: 8-15% of revenue is the healthy band. Under 8%, organic + email is carrying you and you're leaving paid scale on the table. Over 15%, paid acquisition is becoming the only growth lever and that's a structural risk.

Stage-adjusted targets

Launch phase (first 90 days): 25-40% is fine — you're buying data and attention. Year 1: 15-22%. Mature: 8-15%. Brands that never get below 15% by year 2 typically have a positioning problem masquerading as a marketing problem.

The metric that actually matters

Spend % is a symptom, not a goal. The real metric: 90-day blended payback (all marketing spend / new customer profit) under 6 months. Brands with healthy payback can spend whatever they want; brands with bad payback can't spend anything sustainably.

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