What is cost per lead, and how do you measure it in Metabase?

Cost per lead is spend divided by leads (or other target actions) generated — the efficiency metric for the top of a lead-gen funnel. It sits betweenCPC, which prices attention, and CAC, which prices actual customers. Measure it in Metabase from spend and lead data synced from LinkedIn Ads, Google Ads, and Meta Ads.

What cost per lead measures

It measures how efficiently a channel converts budget into hand-raisers. That makes it the right metric for comparing campaigns within a channel and for spotting creative or audience decay early — lead volume reacts faster than revenue does. It is the wrong metric to optimize in isolation, because platforms will happily deliver cheaper leads by finding people who fill in forms but never buy.

Raw leads vs. qualified leads

A raw lead is a form fill; a qualified lead (MQL or SQL, by whatever your team's definition is) is one that survived a quality check. The two costs move independently: broaden targeting and CPL falls while cost per qualified lead rises, because the extra leads are noise. LinkedIn Lead Gen Forms are the canonical example — prefilled forms make submitting nearly frictionless, so raw volume is high and the qualification step does the real filtering. Connect CPL to downstream conversion so cheap-but-bad channels get caught instead of rewarded.

What data does it need?

• An ad_performance_daily table with channel, stat_date, spend, and leads as each platform reports them.
• A CRM leads table with source_channel, created_at, and an is_qualified flag — one lead definition applied to every channel.

SQL patterns

SELECT
  channel,
  date_trunc('month', stat_date) AS month,
  SUM(spend) AS spend,
  SUM(leads) AS leads,
  ROUND(SUM(spend) / NULLIF(SUM(leads), 0), 2) AS cost_per_lead
FROM ad_performance_daily
WHERE stat_date >= CURRENT_DATE - INTERVAL '12 months'
GROUP BY 1, 2
ORDER BY 2, 1;

WITH monthly_spend AS (
  SELECT
    channel,
    date_trunc('month', stat_date) AS month,
    SUM(spend) AS spend
  FROM ad_performance_daily
  GROUP BY 1, 2
),
lead_counts AS (
  SELECT
    source_channel AS channel,
    date_trunc('month', created_at) AS month,
    COUNT(*) AS leads,
    COUNT(*) FILTER (WHERE is_qualified) AS qualified_leads
  FROM leads
  GROUP BY 1, 2
)
SELECT
  s.month,
  s.channel,
  ROUND(s.spend / NULLIF(l.leads, 0), 2) AS cost_per_lead,
  ROUND(s.spend / NULLIF(l.qualified_leads, 0), 2)
    AS cost_per_qualified_lead,
  ROUND(100.0 * l.qualified_leads / NULLIF(l.leads, 0), 1)
    AS qualification_rate_pct
FROM monthly_spend s
JOIN lead_counts l
  ON l.channel = s.channel AND l.month = s.month
ORDER BY 1, 2;

Pitfalls

Where this metric applies

• LinkedIn Ads + Metabase — Lead Gen Form leads and campaign spend
• Google Ads + Metabase — lead form extensions and conversion actions
• Meta Ads + Metabase — instant form leads by campaign

Related

Metrics

Dashboards

FAQ