Average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC) for DTC Brands

For the DTC brands in our panel, the median blended CAC is €40.84 per new customer as of August 2026, up about 36 percent from €30.04 a year earlier, and the middle half of brands sits between €26.12 and €63.45. By industry, the median ranges from €34.71 in fashion & accessories to €60.56 in home & living. We publish the median rather than the mean because a few brands with very expensive customers would pull an average far up.

One that the first order or the customer's lifetime value pays back. A value below €26.12 puts a brand in the cheapest quarter of the panel, above €63.45 in the most expensive quarter. As a reality check: at the median basket of €78.25 and a 60 percent gross margin, a first order earns about €46.95 of gross profit against a median CAC of €40.84, so the typical brand roughly pays back acquisition on the first order and profits on repeat orders.

Latest medians: fashion & accessories €34.71, health & nutrition €45.23, beauty & personal care €51.57, home & living €60.56. Higher prices and more considered purchases cost more to win, which is why home & living sits at the top. The all-industries median is €40.84.

Blended CAC divides total paid ad spend by all new customers, including those who came through organic search, word of mouth or email. Channel CAC (or CPA in an ad platform) divides one channel's spend by the customers that channel claims. Platforms each claim the same customers, so channel CPAs usually add up to more customers than the shop actually won. Blended CAC is the number that ties to the P&L.

The panel's median moved from €28.65 in January 2025 to €40.84 in August 2026, up about 36 percent from €30.04 a year earlier. Rising media prices and falling conversion rates both push CAC up, so read it next to the Meta CPM and conversion rate benchmarks to see which one moved.

Work through the inputs of CAC one at a time. Media prices: the median Meta CPM is €10.54 and the median Meta cost per link click €0.93, so pay above that and targeting or creative is the lever. Conversion: the median shop converts 2.31 percent of sessions, and every tenth of a point there lowers CAC without touching media. Waste: exclude existing customers from prospecting and send only new-customer purchases to Meta's Conversions API, so budget goes to people who have not bought yet.

It is aggregated from the connected ad accounts, first-party tracking and Shopify orders of a subset of adtribute customers, all direct-to-consumer brands. The panel is balanced, the same brands in every month since January 2025, so the line moves because the market moved, not because the panel changed. Brands whose median blended CAC over the last twelve months exceeds €150 are excluded, so very high-ticket businesses do not distort a consumer DTC median. Only medians and quartile bands are published, never a single brand's value, and the series updates every month.