Glossary /
CAC
Efficiency & cost
CAC
What it costs to win a new customer—and why it lives in your data, not any single ad platform.
Attribution & Measurement
Unit Economics
Data Governance & Nomenclature
Creative & Delivery
Audiences & Targeting
Mobile & Privacy
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is the total cost of sales and marketing required to acquire one new customer over a given period.
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?
What is CAC?
CAC answers a CFO question: for every new customer you added, how much did you spend to get them? Add up all sales and marketing costs—ad spend, agency fees, salaries, tools—then divide by the number of net-new customers in the same window. The number you get depends on what you include. Blended CAC counts every customer against total spend, including organic and word-of-mouth. Paid CAC counts only customers from paid channels against paid spend. Per-channel CAC isolates a single source. The three rarely match, and confusing them is where most CAC arguments start. CAC is not a metric any ad platform reports. Google and Meta report cost per conversion or cost per acquisition for events they can see. True CAC lives downstream, where you know who actually became a paying customer—and at what real, cross-channel cost.
CAC formula
CAC = Total Sales & Marketing Spend ÷ New Customers Acquired
CAC = Total Sales & Marketing Spend ÷ New Customers Acquired. The numerator should reflect every cost tied to acquisition over the period—media spend, agency and creative fees, marketing salaries, and tooling. The denominator is net-new paying customers in that same window. Match the time periods, and decide upfront whether you're calculating blended CAC (all spend, all customers) or paid CAC (paid spend, paid-attributed customers only).
Worked example
One quarter of blended sales & marketing.
Total Sales & Marketing Spend
$300,000
New Customers Acquired
600
CAC
$500
$300,000 ÷ 600 = $500
No ad platform reports CAC — it includes salaries, fees, and organic customers the platforms never see.
CAC formula
CAC = Total Sales & Marketing Spend ÷ New Customers Acquired
CAC = Total Sales & Marketing Spend ÷ New Customers Acquired. The numerator should reflect every cost tied to acquisition over the period—media spend, agency and creative fees, marketing salaries, and tooling. The denominator is net-new paying customers in that same window. Match the time periods, and decide upfront whether you're calculating blended CAC (all spend, all customers) or paid CAC (paid spend, paid-attributed customers only).
Worked example
One quarter of blended sales & marketing.
Total Sales & Marketing Spend
$300,000
New Customers Acquired
600
CAC
$500
$300,000 ÷ 600 = $500
No ad platform reports CAC — it includes salaries, fees, and organic customers the platforms never see.
How CAC differs across ad platforms
Google Ads
Reports Cost / Conversion and Cost / Acquisition for conversions it can attribute. This is a platform CPA, not your business CAC—it excludes salaries, fees, and customers it never saw.
Meta Ads
Reports Cost per Result for the optimization event you chose (purchase, lead, signup). Each ad account counts its own conversions, so summing Meta CPA and Google CPA double-counts assisted journeys.
LinkedIn Ads
Reports cost per conversion for tracked actions, typically with longer B2B windows. None of these platforms knows total spend or who ultimately paid you—so none reports true CAC.
Common CAC misconceptions
CAC is the cost-per-acquisition number in my ad dashboard.
Platform CPA only counts conversions that platform can see, against media spend alone. Real CAC includes salaries, tools, and fees, and counts every new customer—including organic ones the platforms never touched.
You can add up each platform's CAC to get your total.
Each platform claims credit independently, so summing them inflates results and double-counts shared journeys. Blended CAC is computed once, from total spend over total new customers—not by stacking dashboards.
Related Terms
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CAC in simple terms?
CAC is how much you spend, on average, to get one new paying customer. Take everything you spent on sales and marketing, divide it by the number of new customers you won, and that's your customer acquisition cost.
How is CAC calculated?
Why does CAC differ across ad platforms?
How does Clarisights report on CAC?
Attribution & Measurement
Unit Economics
Data Governance & Nomenclature
Creative & Delivery
Audiences & Targeting
Mobile & Privacy
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost) is the total cost of sales and marketing required to acquire one new customer over a given period.
?
?
What is CAC?
CAC answers a CFO question: for every new customer you added, how much did you spend to get them? Add up all sales and marketing costs—ad spend, agency fees, salaries, tools—then divide by the number of net-new customers in the same window. The number you get depends on what you include. Blended CAC counts every customer against total spend, including organic and word-of-mouth. Paid CAC counts only customers from paid channels against paid spend. Per-channel CAC isolates a single source. The three rarely match, and confusing them is where most CAC arguments start. CAC is not a metric any ad platform reports. Google and Meta report cost per conversion or cost per acquisition for events they can see. True CAC lives downstream, where you know who actually became a paying customer—and at what real, cross-channel cost.
CAC formula
CAC = Total Sales & Marketing Spend ÷ New Customers Acquired
CAC = Total Sales & Marketing Spend ÷ New Customers Acquired. The numerator should reflect every cost tied to acquisition over the period—media spend, agency and creative fees, marketing salaries, and tooling. The denominator is net-new paying customers in that same window. Match the time periods, and decide upfront whether you're calculating blended CAC (all spend, all customers) or paid CAC (paid spend, paid-attributed customers only).
Worked example
One quarter of blended sales & marketing.
Total Sales & Marketing Spend
$300,000
New Customers Acquired
600
CAC
$500
$300,000 ÷ 600 = $500
No ad platform reports CAC — it includes salaries, fees, and organic customers the platforms never see.
How CAC differs across ad platforms
Google Ads
Reports Cost / Conversion and Cost / Acquisition for conversions it can attribute. This is a platform CPA, not your business CAC—it excludes salaries, fees, and customers it never saw.
Meta Ads
Reports Cost per Result for the optimization event you chose (purchase, lead, signup). Each ad account counts its own conversions, so summing Meta CPA and Google CPA double-counts assisted journeys.
LinkedIn Ads
Reports cost per conversion for tracked actions, typically with longer B2B windows. None of these platforms knows total spend or who ultimately paid you—so none reports true CAC.
Common CAC misconceptions
CAC is the cost-per-acquisition number in my ad dashboard.
Platform CPA only counts conversions that platform can see, against media spend alone. Real CAC includes salaries, tools, and fees, and counts every new customer—including organic ones the platforms never touched.
You can add up each platform's CAC to get your total.
Each platform claims credit independently, so summing them inflates results and double-counts shared journeys. Blended CAC is computed once, from total spend over total new customers—not by stacking dashboards.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is CAC in simple terms?
CAC is how much you spend, on average, to get one new paying customer. Take everything you spent on sales and marketing, divide it by the number of new customers you won, and that's your customer acquisition cost.
How is CAC calculated?
Why does CAC differ across ad platforms?
How does Clarisights report on CAC?
See Viewable Impression across every channel in one report
See Viewable Impression across every channel in one report
See viewability and vCPM across every platform—display, video, programmatic— in one normalized report, instead of reconciling vendor numbers by hand.
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