How the payback period is calculated
The payback period is the time it takes a cohort's cumulative revenue to cover its acquisition cost. In ROAS terms, it is the day cumulative ROAS reaches 1x.
A worked example with a cohort: a campaign spends $10,000 and drives 5,000 installs in one week. Cumulative revenue from those users is $2,000 by day 7, $5,500 by day 30, $8,000 by day 60 and $10,200 by day 90. The cohort pays back between day 60 and day 90, close to day 90.
A simpler formula works when monthly revenue per customer is steady, as with a subscription:
payback (months) = CAC / monthly revenue per customer
If CAC is $45 and a subscriber pays $9.99 a month, payback is about 4.5 months, before store fees and churn.
Why payback matters
Payback ties marketing to cash. A team with a 60-day payback can reinvest the same dollars six times a year; a team with a 12-month payback has its cash locked up for a year per cohort. Two campaigns with the same eventual ROI can have very different payback periods, and when cash is limited the faster one usually wins.
Payback also sets the early targets you optimize toward. If cohorts historically reach 1x by day 120 and D7 ROAS is typically one fifth of D120 ROAS, a D7 ROAS of 0.2x is your break-even signal for new campaigns.
How to shorten payback
- Monetize earlier. Annual plans, earlier paywalls and first-purchase offers pull revenue forward.
- Improve early retention. Users who stay past the first week keep paying.
- Cut weak sources. Drop campaigns whose cohorts never reach 1x within your horizon.
- Bid on value. Send purchase and revenue events back to ad networks so they find users who pay.
Tracking payback in Linkrunner
Linkrunner reports attributed revenue at D0, D3, D7 and D30 and LTV up to D30, with spend synced from Meta, Google and Apple Ads, so you can see cumulative ROAS per campaign and cohort as it builds. For longer horizons, export the cohort data and extend the curve. See ROAS measurement or model it in the ROAS calculator.