Cost Per Acquisition

Cost per acquisition (CPA) tells you how much money, on average, you spend to get one desired result such as a sale, lead, or app install. It is found by dividing the total campaign spend by the number of conversions, which works because you are spreading the total cost evenly across all successful outcomes. A lower CPA usually means your marketing is converting efficiently, while a higher CPA suggests you may be paying too much for each result.

Use CPA when you want to measure how efficiently an ad campaign, email campaign, or promotion turns spending into actual conversions. It is especially useful for comparing different marketing channels, audiences, or campaigns that are all trying to generate the same type of result.

• Using clicks or impressions instead of actual conversions
• Forgetting to include all campaign costs in the total spend
• Comparing CPA values from campaigns with different conversion goals