CPS

CPS - Cost Per Sale, the cost of one sale generated by an advertising campaign. Formula: CPS = advertising budget ÷ number of sales. CPS is a more “final” metric than CPL or CPA: it considers the fact of payment, and not the intermediate target action.

CPS is especially important in two contexts: e-commerce (direct confirmation of a sale from advertising) and affiliate marketing (CPS is a standard payment model in CPA networks, where the publisher receives a commission for each sale). In CPA networks like Admitad or ActionPay, CPS is actually a payment model with the webmaster.

In my practice, CPS is often 3-5 times higher than CPL - this is how many leads on average need to be processed to get one sale. If CPS has grown disproportionately to CPL, the problem is in the sales department or in the quality of leads, not in advertising. For this purpose, I separately calculate the “cost of a lost deal” and show the client how much money is wasted at the lead processing stage.

A separate metric is CPS broken down by channel. An E-com project can have an average CPS of 1,200 ₽ on Direct and 800 ₽ on VK - with the same CPL. This means that the quality of leads from VK is higher: they convert better. This is why CPS is more important than CPL when evaluating a channel.