← Glossary
Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)
Cost per acquisition is your advertising spend divided by the number of conversions it produced.
Why it matters
It is the most direct measure of whether advertising is working - provided the conversions counted are the ones that make you money.
What people get wrong
Comparing it to an industry benchmark instead of to the same account's own history. A roofing account with a $955 cost per acquisition reads as broken against a generic benchmark and as entirely normal against its own trailing average. The useful question is almost never "is this above average" - it is "has this changed".