What it is
cohort_acquisition_cost is what it cost to acquire one customer in a cohort.
It is stated per customer acquired into the cohort, not as the cohort’s total. A cohort that spent twice as much and won twice as many customers reads the same as a smaller one beside it, and that is what makes two cohorts of different sizes comparable at all.
One cohort does not carry one figure. The cost is held for an acquisition month cut by segment, so a month that brought in enterprise and mid-market customers carries a figure for each of them. A reader expecting a single number per month will misread every comparison made from it.
This figure is the kind of number your finance team reads as a matter of course, and it is still not open by default on any door. Reaching it on the read interface or through MCP tools, sending it to an event destination, and writing it onto your CRM records each take an opt-in, and Where it comes from says where that choice is made — a rule about where the value may travel, not about who inside your company may look at it.
How it is calculated
Measured. The acquisition cost attributed to the customers who entered the cohort, divided by how many of them entered it. Nothing in it is projected — it is money already spent, on customers already won. The cohort’s total spend is not published, and this figure will not give it to you. Multiplying by the number of customers acquired is the obvious next step, and that count is not published.segment_account_count is not a substitute for it: that is the segment’s population now, not the number of customers it took in during one month, and multiplying by it produces a number that means nothing. Where the total spend is what you need, it is a question for your own spend records rather than for this figure.
Where it comes from
Two things, both already in your systems. The spend comes from the acquisition costs recorded against the campaigns and channels that reached those customers — your marketing sources and your CRM. The count comes from the acquisition dates behind the cohort, from billing and your CRM. The figure sits on the cohort’s economic record, which the customer side of Beacon produces once it is live and the cohort has enough completed history behind it. Before that the record does not exist and neither does this figure. Nothing is estimated in its place.
Where the choice is made. This figure is not open by default on any door. The choice happens when a reader grant that reaches it is issued or widened, when you subscribe to events, or when you turn the CRM property on. Whoever makes it is shown who becomes able to see the figure, and their yes is recorded — holding a grant is no longer enough on its own. That is a rule about where the value may travel, not about who inside your company may look at it.
The CRM and event doors carry a further consequence. Every read of the figure through Beacon is recorded in the access log; once it sits on a CRM record or has been sent to an event destination, that tool’s own permissions govern who reads it from then on and Beacon can no longer record who did.
And what accompanies it there is not settled. This is an aggregate, assembled from many parts each converted where it was recorded, so it travels with your reporting currency and the kinds of anchor its parts were pinned under — and it carries no single anchor date and no single billing currency, because it does not have one. Through the read interface and through MCP all of that travels with the figure automatically, in the same response. A CRM property holds one value. The table above says the door is open behind an opt-in; it does not say the rendering is finished. That is being worked out and will be stated here when it is.
How fresh it is
A cohort’s membership is frozen when it opens, so the customers this figure is struck over never change. It does not drift as the cohort ages, and nothing those customers do afterwards reaches it. It settles once the acquisition spend for that period is recorded and attributed, and moves after that only if the spend itself is restated.Currency and rounding
The figure is in your single reporting currency. The spend behind it is converted where it is recorded, under the rules set out in currency; no second conversion happens when the cohort figure is struck. Beacon applies no rounding of its own. A screen or an export may round for display; the value as published is not rounded to a whole hundred.What changes it
A restatement of the acquisition spend attributed to those customers, or a change in what is attributed to them. A correction to which customers belong to the cohort — a wrong acquisition date, or the wrong segment recorded at acquisition — which re-cuts the figure for two cohorts at once. A change in your reporting currency, which changes the currency the figure is stated in. Nothing the customers do after they are acquired. Expansion, contraction and churn all move cohort lifetime value; none of them moves this.What it is not
- Not the cohort’s total acquisition spend. It is that total divided by the customers it bought, and the divisor is not published.
- Not your company’s cost per acquisition. It is one month’s intake inside one segment.
- Not comparable with an acquisition cost cut a different way. A campaign, a channel and an acquisition month are three different populations, and a figure struck over one does not read against a figure struck over another.
- Not a forecast and not a budget. It is money already spent.
- Not half of a ratio you can strike here. Dividing cohort lifetime value by this figure produces a number Beacon does not publish, and that article says why.