Financial Metrics
CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)
The total combined sales, operational, and marketing expenditure required to successfully win a new advertising client.
What is CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)?
CAC measures what it actually costs a business — a radio station, a media agency, a SaaS platform — to sign up one new paying customer. The calculation divides total fully-loaded sales and marketing spend by the number of new customers won in the same period. If a station spent €100,000 on sales salaries, tools, travel, and marketing in a quarter and signed 20 new advertisers, its CAC is €5,000.
CAC is the denominator in every unit-economics model: LTV-to-CAC ratio, CAC payback period, marketing ROI. A business with a CAC that approaches or exceeds the average customer's lifetime value is structurally unprofitable. For broadcast stations, reducing CAC by automating prospecting and lead generation is the fastest path to expanding margin — which is why platforms like Spotwise frame their value proposition explicitly around CAC reduction.
Why it matters
Automated lead generation tools like Spotwise drastically lower a station's CAC by eliminating the immense human capital previously spent manually prospecting.
Related terms
- ROI (Return on Investment)— The overall net profit or revenue gained compared directly to the total cost of the marketing initiative or software tool.
- Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)— An advertising pricing model where the advertiser pays only when a specific desired action (a sale, a click, a form fill) is completed.
- Cost Per Completed View (CPCV)— A digital video and advanced TV metric where the advertiser only pays if the video advertisement plays entirely to completion.
- CPM (Cost Per Mille / Thousand)— The standard monetary cost associated with delivering exactly 1,000 ad impressions to an audience.