CPL, CPA and ROAS all in one sentence and I lost the thread

A lead is whatever the contract says a lead is, and if the contract doesn't say, it's whatever the dashboard says. Ask for the written definition. On my land ads a form fill and an actual conversation are two completely different animals, maybe a third of the forms have a fake number in them, and the agency counted every one.

Cost per lead, CPL, is ad spend divided by leads. Spend $4,500, get 100 leads, that's $45 each. Cost per acquisition, CPA, is the same division against a finished event, usually a signed contract, so $1,800 per contract means that much ad money went out the door before one seller signed. ROAS is return on ad spend, revenue divided by spend, so 3x means three dollars of revenue for every dollar into the platform.

Two things decide whether those numbers mean anything. The first is the lead definition, which parcel is right about. Some agencies count any form with a name and a phone number in it. Others count only calls over 60 seconds, or forms where the person answered the property address field. The identical campaign reports 100 leads or 40 depending on which line is in the agreement, and your $45 becomes $112 without a single thing changing in the ads.

The second is what's in the denominator. Almost every agency calculates CPL on ad spend alone. Your real cost per lead includes the retainer and whatever software they ask you to subscribe to, so ask them to show you the all-in number too.

ROAS is a strange fit for wholesale or flips, because revenue shows up in a $30,000 lump one month and zero the next two. Cost per signed contract, measured over a quarter rather than a month, will tell you more about whether the spend pencils.

$45 a lead sounds fine until you find out 12 of the 100 were the same woman filling in the form on three different landing pages. Ask how they dedupe.