Glossary
Every term vCMO uses, in plain English. You don't have to be a marketer — that's the point.
- attribution
- Tying a paying customer back to the exact ad click that earned them.
- blended cac
- Total ad spend divided by total paying customers, across everything.
- cac
- Customer acquisition cost — what you pay in ads to land one paying customer.
- churn
- The share of your customers who cancel each month.
- clicks
- How many people clicked your ad through to your site.
- contribution margin
- Your price minus what it costs to serve one customer for a month. The dollar each customer throws off toward profit and ad costs.
- credible interval
- A 90% range of where your true CAC most likely sits. Wide means not enough data yet; narrow means a confident read. Better than one flattering number.
- impression
- How many times your ad was shown.
- information floor
- The minimum paid conversions before vCMO will call scale or kill — it guards against acting on a lucky fluke.
- ltv
- Lifetime value — the total contribution margin one customer brings before they cancel.
- maturity
- The share of your signups old enough to have finished their trial. Only mature signups can have converted to paid yet, so only they count toward the paid rate.
- p(cac<target)
- The probability your true CAC is below your target. vCMO scales only at 90%+.
- payback window
- How many months of contribution margin you're willing to wait to recover a customer's acquisition cost. The lever behind your target CAC.
- sufficiency
- How much more spend and time until there's enough data to reach a verdict.
- target cac
- The most you can pay to acquire a customer and still come out ahead — your CAC ceiling. vCMO sets it from your contribution margin and payback window.
- verdict
- vCMO's call on an ad: SCALE (winning), KILL (losing), or GATHER (too early to tell).