2026 Paid Media Efficiency Benchmarks: CAC, ROAS and Payback by Channel
Median CAC, blended ROAS and payback periods across 412 anonymized advertiser accounts, split by channel, spend band and business model.
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Marketing analytics, attribution and decision intelligence — in one place.
Guides, original research, benchmark studies and product updates for teams that own a revenue number. Written by people who ran the budgets.
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Guides
Step-by-step playbooks for measuring, interpreting and acting on paid media performance.
Research
Original studies from anonymized Paid Lens account data — methodology included.
Benchmarks
Reference numbers for CAC, ROAS, pipeline conversion and spend efficiency by channel.
Product Updates
What shipped in Paid Lens, why it shipped, and what it changes in your workflow.
Attribution
How credit actually moves between channels, and how to stop double-counting revenue.
AI Marketing
Explainable AI, confidence scoring and where automated decisions belong in marketing.
Executive Reporting
Reporting that survives a CFO review: pipeline, payback and the decisions behind them.
Performance Marketing
Budget allocation, creative testing and channel management for teams that own revenue.
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Looking for setup instructions instead? Read the Paid Lens documentation or see what shipped in the product changelog.
The platform behind the research
Every guide here maps back to a part of the Paid Lens platform.
Attribution and trusted numbersOne measurement model across every channel, auditable end to end.AI marketing recommendationsRanked decisions with expected impact and confidence scores.Executive reportingBoard-ready reporting built from the same numbers.Marketing data integrationsThe sources feeding the benchmarks in these articles.Plans and pricingWhat it costs to run this on your own data.DocumentationImplementation detail for each capability.