Table 22 Sept 2026From “What is CAC?”

Which four distinct CAC definitions serve four opposing capital decisions?

Table 2Which four distinct CAC definitions serve four opposing capital decisions?

View	Operating numerator and denominator	Decision it can inform	Main risk
Blended CAC	All declared acquisition cost divided by all new customers in the portfolio cohort	Portfolio budget and overall acquisition burden	Mix changes can improve the average without improving any route
Paid CAC	Declared paid-media cost and associated paid activity divided by customers counted under the paid boundary	Paid program screening	It can exclude sales, onboarding, organic overlap, or customers not captured by the attribution rule
Fully Loaded CAC	All declared acquisition and activation costs divided by the defined new-customer cohort	Cash, capacity, and operating-model decisions	Allocation of shared people and platform costs can look more objective than it is
Incremental CAC	Additional cost caused by the intervention divided by additional customers relative to a counterfactual	Scale, pause, or reallocate an intervention	Without a credible comparison, the label is only an aspiration

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Source: Table from this essay. Sources and interpretation are given in the article.

PNG4:3, 1600 × 1200, with the title, the source line and the attribution set in the image isoglu-2026-what-is-cac-fig03.png

From the essay

Growth that compounds

What is CAC?

CAC is a defined cost per acquired customer, not a universal ratio. State the cohort, boundary, horizon and counterfactual before comparing channels.

2 Sept 2026

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APA 7

Isoglu, S. (2026). Which four distinct CAC definitions serve four opposing capital decisions? [Table]. isoglu.com. https://isoglu.com/insights/exhibits/isoglu-2026-what-is-cac-fig03/

BibTeX

@misc{isoglu-2026-what-is-cac-fig03,
  author = {Isoglu, Sinan},
  title = {{Which four distinct CAC definitions serve four opposing capital decisions?}},
  year = {2026},
  howpublished = {Table 2, isoglu.com},
  url = {https://isoglu.com/insights/exhibits/isoglu-2026-what-is-cac-fig03/},
  note = {From the essay {What is CAC?}}
}

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