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I've seen the distinction drawn, usefully I think, between "Cost of Revenue" as more or less fixed operating costs eg AWS spend, and "Customer Acquisition Cost"
by throwanem 4y ago
I've seen the distinction drawn, usefully I think, between "Cost of Revenue" as more or less fixed operating costs eg AWS spend, and "Customer Acquisition Cost" as specifically the average spend to gain "another user on a website", usually in a way that can be either considered in the aggregate or broken out per channel such as for specific ad vendors or similar.
I think "COGS" as discussed here would probably be a rollup of both? Not sure; while I've been in orgs where the cost center/profit center distinction was made, I haven't run into a situation where COGS was a metric I saw used.
- awkward 4y agoCost of Revenue and Customer Acquisition Cost are both different metrics. COGS is used in manufacturing in order to peg inputs to a per widget basis. Cost of Revenue gets used in tech because per customer costs are both a bad way to measure it and likely to be fractions of cents. Customer Acquisition Cost gets used in subscription businesses to measure sales and marketing performance. It can be relevant alongside COGS if you're manufacturing the thing you're selling subscriptions to, but that's kinda rare.
- throwanem 4y agoGot it. Thanks for the clarification!