eCPA
eCPA (effective Cost Per Action) is the actual cost of a single conversion, calculated at the end of a campaign regardless of whether traffic was bought on CPM, CPC, CPV, or a flat rate. Unlike the nominal buying model, eCPA shows what a user action really ended up costing.
How eCPA is calculated
The formula is eCPA = total campaign spend divided by actual conversions, such as installs or leads, not impressions or clicks. That makes eCPA a universal denominator for comparing sources bought under completely different pricing models.
eCPA in PWA arbitrage
It's eCPA, not the nominal impression or click price, that gets compared against the offer's payout to see a campaign's real ROI. APEX split-tests with sticky bucketing speed up finding a creative-plus-prelander combo with a low eCPA, since they cut weak variants automatically instead of requiring a manual eCPA recalculation for every branch.
FAQ
- How is eCPA different from the CPA a network pays?
- The network's CPA is a fixed payout per conversion, set upfront in the offer terms. eCPA is what that conversion actually cost the buyer to generate through ad spend, and the gap between the two determines profit.
- Why compare sources on eCPA instead of CPM or CPC?
- Because CPM and CPC only describe the entry point of the funnel — an impression or a click — not the final conversion a network actually pays for. A source with an expensive CPM but a strong install rate can still produce a lower eCPA than a cheap CPM with weak conversion.
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