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Why 70% of B2B APAC Firms Are Overspending on CAC (and Don’t Know It)
In B2B marketing, the ultimate measure of efficiency is your Customer Acquisition Cost, or CAC. It’s a number every firm in APAC tracks, but we’ve found that a staggering number of organizations are overspending and don't even realize it. For many, the problem is not a lack of effort, but a fundamental miscalculation. The CAC they’re tracking is a phantom number, a deceptive figure that hides true inefficiency and waste.
This reality isborn from a combination of complex, fragmented markets and a reliance on outdated measurement practices. We’ve seen this time and again in our work with B2B firms across the region. We'll help you uncover where your budget is really going and how to fix it, starting with a clear look at what’s driving this overspending in the first place.
The standard definition of CAC is straightforward: you divide your total sales and marketing costs by the number of new customers acquired within a given period. But as we've seen, many firms only include direct ad spend in this calculation, omitting what are called fully loaded costs. This can include everything from salaries and commissions to software tools and agency fees, which understates your true CAC.
The digital landscape in APAC only compounds this issue. With a multitude of languages, platforms, and variations in media quality, it is easy to accumulate waste. This complexity means that a surface-level CAC can look good on paper, while hidden inefficiencies are quietly draining your budget. As a report notes, a holistic approach to measurement is the only way to get a real picture.
For a true measure of efficiency, CAC should be fully loaded and tracked over a defined period, like a quarter. Focusing solely on direct ad spend will give you a misleadingly low number. A better approach is to use a blended CAC, which accounts for all channels and their cross-channel effects.
The biggest mistake we see is B2B firms importing US or European CAC benchmarks without adjusting for the unique nature of the APAC market. APAC is not a single market. It is heterogeneous, with vastly different media costs, regulations, and consumer behaviors.
Furthermore, digital’s share of ad spend in APAC is projected to reach 73% of total media in 2025. This shift towards digital channels comes with different profiles for ad quality and viewability. Your benchmarks must account for these regional variations or risk misguiding your entire budget.
One of the most significant blind spots is a reliance on flawed data. An overreliance on last-click models and a failure to import all costs into your analytics platform under-credit crucial upper and mid-funnel efforts, as detailed in Google Analytics documentation.
The competitive landscape is becoming more intense. The growth of ad spend in APAC is moderating from 7.5% in 2024 to 5.9% in 2025. This means every dollar needs to work harder and more efficiently.
What my team and I have found is that many B2B marketers in APAC are acutely aware of the problem. A report reveals that data confidence and tech integration are cited as critical challenges, directly impacting their ability to deploy budgets efficiently.
The fragmented nature of APAC markets, with their diverse languages and regulations, drives higher coordination costs. This complexity makes it difficult to measure and creates a greater risk for inflated CAC. The growth of programmatic advertising and the open web also presents a challenge, requiring stronger verification and attention measurement to combat waste.
A major issue is a lack of understanding of the buying process. A recent report revealed that two-thirds, or 68%, of APAC B2B marketers lack a robust process to identify buying groups. This leads to off-target spend and low-quality conversions, inflating your CAC.
We've seen how these inefficiencies play out. A common pattern is over-indexing on lower-funnel channels, where marketers get “cheap clicks” but end up with expensive conversions because they haven’t accounted for viewability and suitability in the open web. Another pattern is expanding audiences without a data-backed strategy. 58% of marketers broadened their targets in 2024, which can dilute efficiency if not properly measured end-to-end.
The fix begins with an honest and accurate calculation. We advise our clients to use a blended CAC: taking all sales and marketing costs, including salaries, tools, agency fees, and other program spend, and dividing it by the number of new customers over a fixed period. This method gives you a much better picture of true efficiency, which you can then track through payback and your LTV:CAC ratio. You must also include gross margin when assessing LTV to ensure your CAC investments are linked to long-term profitability.
The basic formula is: CAC = (Sales + Marketing) ÷ New Customers. My team and I recommend calculating this per quarter to observe trend and seasonality effects. While you can still break out channel-specific CACs (e.g., for paid media or content), you should always benchmark them against your blended CAC to avoid over-crediting last-click channels.
Many firms mistakenly exclude crucial costs from their CAC. These include people costs (salaries and benefits for your SDRs, AEs, and marketing team), tooling, content production, and commissions. These are all direct costs of acquiring a customer, and excluding them skews your CAC downwards. In the APAC context, you also must capitalize data infrastructure (CDP/analytics) into your CAC to reflect the true cost of navigating the complex media environment.
To get a complete view, you need to bring all your data together. We recommend that our clients import non-Google ad costs into GA4 to unify spend with conversions and compute ROAS and CAC consistently across channels. You should also move beyond last-click attribution by leveraging data-driven attribution (DDA) in GA4. For more strategic budget planning, complement this with a Marketing Mix Model (MMM), such as Google Meridian or LightweightMMM.
The paradox is that while overspending is widespread, it often goes unnoticed because marketers report high confidence in their ROI measurement. Yet, only about 37% of them evaluate holistic ROI across both traditional and digital channels. This gap between confidence and capability is the root of the blind spot. Overspending also hides in the complexity of modern B2B buying journeys, which often involve 6 to 10 stakeholders, diffusing the signal across countless touchpoints and making a last-click CAC seem deceptively cheap.
Another major reason for hidden CAC waste is the structural misalignment between sales and marketing teams. A report highlights this as a persistent cause of inefficiency. A LinkedIn study found that only 54% of organizations report even “some synergies” between their sales and marketing teams, which leaves pipeline and CAC optimization underpowered.
The overspending is also masked by the nature of the B2B buying journey itself. The typical B2B sales cycle now averages 11.5 months, and multi-national deals can stretch to almost 16 months. This long time frame slows payback and makes it difficult to see the full impact of inefficient spend in the short term. The buying groups themselves are complex, commonly including 6 to 10 decision-makers, increasing the number of touchpoints to track and potentially misattribute.
Now for the solution. My team and I have developed a clear framework to help B2B firms in APAC get their CAC under control. It starts with two key initiatives: tightening measurement and improving media quality.
A report found that investing in verification and attention metrics in APAC correlates with better engagement and lower exposure to risk. By unifying costs in GA4, using DDA, and running MMM, you can rebalance your budget toward channels that truly lower your blended CAC.
As marketing teams face budget pressure, we must look for ways to do more with less. My team and I have found that strategic adoption of AI and automation can be a game-changer for B2B firms in APAC. By leveraging technology in your content creation processes, you can scale your efforts and create a greater volume of content without a proportional increase in costs.
Furthermore, automating the analysis of buyer intent and signals allows you to capture warmer target audiences at the right time. Instead of relying on manual lead qualification, you can use these tools to prioritize prospects who are actively researching solutions. This makes your outreach more effective and saves valuable time for your sales team. Finally, building systematic, repeatable workflows for tasks like lead nurturing and campaign management saves significant time and money over the long run, ensuring your acquisition engine runs as efficiently as possible.
One of the most powerful changes you can make is aligning your marketing and sales teams. Forrester recommends re-architecting KPI frameworks to focus on shared revenue outcomes. APAC studies emphasize the importance of data confidence. Marketers who were confident in their data strategy were 3x more likely to see significant revenue increases.
The most effective way to allocate your budget and reduce CAC is by using data-driven attribution models. GA4’s data-driven attribution (DDA) distributes credit across all touchpoints, giving you a more accurate picture of what's truly working. You can set it as your default for most reports, which improves budget allocation and CAC accuracy. For a more strategic and long-term view, combine DDA with incrementality and Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM), using tools like Google Meridian or LightweightMMM.
Finally, while we're talking about CAC, we cannot ignore the other side of the equation: customer value. Higher Net Revenue Retention (NRR) is directly linked to faster growth. Companies with NRR greater than 100% grow 1.5 to 3 times faster on average. A healthy LTV:CAC ratio, often cited as a 3:1 rule of thumb, is a crucial metric that ensures your CAC investments are economically sound.
This is the moment for action. My team and I recommend you start today with a two-part plan.
By taking these steps, you will move beyond a surface-level understanding of your CAC and begin to make smarter, more profitable decisions for your business.
