CPL & CPA — Cost Per Lead / Per Acquisition

Definition

CPL is acquisition cost down to the lead stage; CPA is cost down to the paying-customer stage (channel-level CAC).

Formula

CPL = Channel spend / Leads
CPA = Channel spend / Paying customers

Worked Example

$4,000 channel spend, 400 leads, 55 paying customers:

CPL = $10.00
CPA = $72.73

Interpretation & Pitfalls

CPL is cheap to optimize but easy to game with low-quality leads; CPA is the honest channel metric.

In TupicFinance

Per-channel campaign costs and attributed conversions produce CPL/CPA side by side.