Blended CAC vs. Paid CAC

Blended CAC is total sales and marketing spend divided by all new customers acquired, regardless of source; paid CAC divides only paid media costs by customers attributable to paid channels. The two answer different questions: blended CAC measures the efficiency of the whole go-to-market motion and is the number boards and investors care about, while paid CAC isolates whether the paid engine itself is working. Teams get into trouble reporting only one — blended CAC can hide a deteriorating paid channel behind strong organic momentum, and paid CAC can look healthy while overall efficiency collapses. Read them together, and segment both: a single blended figure across enterprise and self-serve motions obscures which segment is quietly unprofitable.