Cost Per Acquisition

CPA is total spend divided by the number of conversions it produced. An advertiser can spend heavily on views and still be happy if the cost of each resulting customer sits below what that customer is worth.

For creators this is the number a performance-minded brand is watching during a sponsorship, even when the contract talks about views. If your audience converts cheaply, you can charge more and prove it. Ask which action counts as the conversion and how they attribute it, because a brand measuring last-click will usually undercount a YouTube placement that started the decision weeks earlier.