Financial Metrics
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.
What is Cost Per Acquisition (CPA)?
CPA pricing shifts all performance risk to the publisher. Instead of paying per impression (CPM) or per click (CPC), the advertiser pays only when a conversion occurs — a purchase, a lead form submission, a signup. The publisher therefore has to deliver not just reach, but reach that converts, and takes the loss on impressions that didn't drive action.
CPA dominates direct-response digital advertising and is increasingly common in podcast sponsorships, where unique promo codes provide clean attribution. For terrestrial broadcast, true CPA pricing is rare because attribution is harder; instead, hybrid models blend guaranteed CPMs with CPA-style performance bonuses. The long-term industry trend is toward more performance-style pricing across all broadcast media.
Why it matters
Highly prevalent in digital marketing, broadcasters are increasingly pressured to offer CPA-like guarantees through advanced incrementality testing.
Related terms
- CPM (Cost Per Mille / Thousand)— The standard monetary cost associated with delivering exactly 1,000 ad impressions to an audience.
- Fill Rate— The percentage of available ad requests (avails) that are successfully filled with a paying advertisement by an automated ad server.
- CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost)— The total combined sales, operational, and marketing expenditure required to successfully win a new advertising client.
- 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.