The paid media glossary.

Customer acquisition cost (CAC) is the total sales and marketing spend needed to win one new customer, found by dividing that spend over a period by the number of customers acquired in it. Paid CAC counts ad spend only; blended CAC adds tooling and team cost.

Return on ad spend (ROAS) is the revenue generated for every dollar spent on advertising, calculated as ad-attributed revenue divided by ad spend. A 4:1 ROAS means four dollars of revenue for every dollar spent. It measures revenue efficiency, not profit.

Cost per lead (CPL) is the average ad spend required to generate one lead, calculated by dividing spend by the number of leads captured. It is an early-funnel efficiency metric, and a low CPL means little if those leads never become pipeline.

Pipeline ROAS measures ad spend against the sales pipeline it generates, the value of the opportunities created, rather than just immediate revenue or lead count. For B2B with long sales cycles, it is the truest early read on whether paid media is working.

A marketing qualified lead (MQL) has shown enough interest, such as a demo request or content download, for marketing to pass it to sales. A sales qualified lead (SQL) has been vetted by sales as a genuine opportunity worth pursuing. The gap between them is where most B2B ad budget leaks.

Multi-touch attribution distributes credit for a conversion across all the marketing touchpoints a buyer interacted with, rather than crediting only the first or last click. It is essential in B2B, where a single deal can involve many touches across weeks or months.

Demand capture converts buyers who are already looking for a solution, for example through Search ads on category keywords. Demand generation creates awareness and interest before that search happens, for example through LinkedIn and content. You cannot capture demand that does not exist yet.

Quality Score is Google Ads' 1-to-10 rating of how relevant and useful your keywords, ads, and landing pages are. A higher score lowers your cost per click and improves ad rank, so it directly affects how far each dollar of budget stretches.