Subject areaMetrics and measurement
Cost per acquisition (CPA) is a campaign's spend divided by the number of completed actions the campaign aimed for: a purchase, a quote request, a sign-up.
It is used mostly in digital advertising, where it is often also the way the campaign is paid for.
It differs from cost per lead, which counts contacts, and from customer acquisition cost (CAC), which adds all sales and marketing spend for each new customer. A low CPA on an action loosely tied to revenue is only an apparent result.
An example
A machinery rental company spends three thousand euros on advertising and gets sixty quote requests: the CPA is fifty euros. Only six requests become contracts, and the figure that matters to management is the cost per signed contract.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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