CAC
The average cost required to acquire a new customer, subscriber, or other target user type.
Stands for
Customer acquisition cost
Formal definition
CAC stands for customer acquisition cost: the average spend required to acquire a new customer or another chosen acquisition outcome within a defined period.
Plain-English explanation
CAC tells you how expensive it is to win one new customer. It is often compared with LTV to decide whether a growth motion is healthy.
Examples
- A team spends $12,000 and acquires 300 paying customers, which implies a CAC of $40.
- If CAC rises while LTV stays flat, the channel is usually getting harder to justify.
How it works
- Add up the spend tied to the acquisition program or channel.
- Count the number of customers, subscribers, or target conversions created by that spend.
- Divide cost by acquisitions so channels can be compared on efficiency.
How Attriax uses it
- Attriax supplies the attribution and conversion side of CAC analysis by clarifying which campaigns actually produced the tracked outcome.
- Teams often calculate CAC outside Attriax after joining cost data from ad networks or finance systems.
- CAC becomes most useful when paired with LTV and ROI, not as an isolated metric.