CPA marketing

CPA marketing is the affiliate model: networks pay publishers a fixed amount for each completed action, a lead, an install, a sale. It borrows the acronym from the metric but is a different business: you earn per action instead of paying per acquisition.

• The action is contractual. An advertiser lists an offer on a network with a defined action and payout. Lead forms and installs pay less per action than funded accounts or sales; the harder the action, the higher the payout.
• Verification is the business. Networks hold payouts through a validation window, claw back fraudulent or reversed actions, and score publisher traffic quality. A publisher's effective rate is payout × approval rate, not the listed number.
• The advertiser's side is just CPA buying. To the brand, an affiliate network is one more channel with a fixed cost per action, which belongs in the same blended CPA and ceiling math as paid media.

The metric answers "what did each conversion cost me?" The affiliate model answers "what will you pay me per conversion I deliver?" Confusing them produces bad contracts: an affiliate "CPA" is a price, fixed in advance, while your account CPA floats with performance. Definitions and the action-vs-acquisition gap are covered on cost per action vs cost per acquisition and CPA in marketing.

US publishers operate under the FTC's Endorsement Guides: material connections between publisher and advertiser must be disclosed clearly and close to the claim▸FTC · checked 2026. "Affiliate link" buried in a footer does not meet the standard the FTC describes; the disclosure has to be hard to miss. Networks increasingly enforce this contractually because advertiser liability extends to publisher behaviour.

Looking for the paid-media metric instead? Start at the calculator home or CPA vs CPL.