Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) the total cost to acquire one new customer, including all marketing, advertising, and sales expenses divided by the number of new customers gained.
Dashboardly calculates CAC from your live TikTok Shop data — pulling actual orders, fees, refunds, and returns so the number you see matches your P&L.
TikTok Shop: $8-25 organic, $15-40 paid ads. Amazon: $25-50. Shopify DTC: $30-80. Healthy CAC:LTV ratio is 1:3+.
CAC = Total Marketing & Sales Spend / Number of New Customers Acquired
TikTok's native reports use attributed metrics with click- and view-through windows. Dashboardly calculates CAC from actual order revenue, deducting refunds and returns for a truer number that matches your real P&L.
CAC is a leading indicator — check it daily if you're running ads or running pricing experiments, weekly otherwise. Dashboardly tracks CAC automatically so you don't have to pull exports.
See how CAC works in practice in Customer Lifetime Value Strategies for TikTok Shop: Complete 2026 Guide.
The total cost to acquire one new customer, including all marketing, advertising, and sales expenses divided by the number of new customers gained.
$3,000 ads + $1,000 affiliate commissions = $4,000 spend / 200 new customers = $20 CAC
TikTok Shop: $8-25 organic, $15-40 paid ads. Amazon: $25-50. Shopify DTC: $30-80. Healthy CAC:LTV ratio is 1:3+.
The total cost to acquire one new customer, including all marketing, advertising, and sales expenses divided by the number of new customers gained.
Dashboardly connects to your TikTok Shop and calculates this metric plus 30+ others per SKU. No spreadsheets. No manual math.
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