Attribution & Analytics
Should Creative Production Costs Be Included in CAC?
If creative production exists primarily to acquire customers, it belongs somewhere in the cost of acquisition. Whether you include it in your daily channel CPA is a separate reporting choice.
Keep campaign CPA simple
Ads Manager CPA normally uses media spend only. That makes campaign comparison easy.
Use fully loaded CAC for business economics
Monthly acquisition costs might include:
- paid media
- agency/management
- UGC creators
- photographers/editors
- creative software
- internal acquisition staff
Divide appropriate acquisition costs by new customers to understand the real system cost.
Allocate shared creative sensibly
A photoshoot may support Meta, Google, email and the website. Do not pretend every dollar belongs to one channel if the asset is reused broadly.
Creative investment can improve scale
Higher creative cost is not automatically bad. Spending $20,000 on production can be excellent if it unlocks $500,000 of profitable media. Measure the return on the creative system, not only its expense.
Not sure if ROAS is telling the full story?
If your new-customer CAC excludes a substantial creative operation, send us an inquiry. We can help separate media CPA from fully loaded acquisition cost.