Explanation
For a campaign built on one expensive video, leaving production out is a rounding error. For one running forty pieces of creator-style content, production is a variable cost and often the largest one, so the reported figure and the figure that tells you whether you made money can differ substantially.
The number worth calculating is the break-even production cost per asset: the point at which making another variant stops being profitable. That is the figure that should govern creative decisions, and it is the one that changed when generated assets started costing pennies rather than hundreds.
The common mistake
Treating platform-reported ROAS as a claim about incremental revenue. It is generous by construction and useful mainly for comparing campaigns against each other rather than as an absolute.