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Calculate Your Total Advertising Cost of Sales
Use our free TACOS Calculator to understand how much of your total sales revenue is being spent on advertising.
Simply enter your total advertising spend and total sales for the same period to calculate your TACOS percentage.
What Is TACOS?
TACOS stands for Total Advertising Cost of Sales.
It measures your total advertising spend as a percentage of your total sales revenue.
The calculation is:
TACOS = Total Advertising Spend ÷ Total Sales × 100
For example, if your business spends £1,000 on advertising and generates £10,000 in total sales:
£1,000 ÷ £10,000 × 100 = 10% TACOS
This means advertising spend represents 10% of total sales.
Why Calculate Your Business TACOS?
Looking at advertising spend alone doesn't tell you how that investment relates to the overall performance of your business.
Tracking TACOS can help you understand the relationship between your total advertising costs and total sales, particularly when monitoring performance over time.
You can use it alongside other business and marketing metrics to assess whether advertising expenditure is increasing or decreasing relative to the revenue you're generating.
What Is a Good TACOS?
There isn't one TACOS percentage that's right for every business.
A suitable level will depend on factors such as your margins, industry, advertising strategy, growth objectives and other operating costs.
A growing business may deliberately invest a greater percentage of revenue into advertising, while a more established business may operate differently.
The important thing is to understand your own numbers and monitor how TACOS changes alongside revenue, profitability and wider marketing performance.
How to Use the TACOS Calculator
Enter your:
Total Advertising Spend – your combined advertising expenditure for the period you're measuring.
Total Sales – your total sales revenue for exactly the same period.
The calculator will then show your TACOS percentage.
For an accurate comparison, always make sure both figures relate to the same period.
Understand Your Marketing Performance
TACOS is one useful way of looking at the relationship between advertising investment and overall sales, but it shouldn't be viewed in isolation.
The Advice Centre can help businesses understand their wider marketing strategy and performance across areas including Google Ads, social media, SEO, eCommerce and other digital marketing channels.
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