What CPL is and how it differs from CPA
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CPL is not defined in the Yandex Direct and Metrica help used here. On the Direct glossary, the Metrica goals page, the performance-statistics guide, and the expenses report, the abbreviation CPL does not appear: the price of an action is called CPA. Those four pages were the ones checked. That is not proof the word CPL is absent everywhere else in the help.
The difference those pages can show is not “lead versus action.” It is several different CPAs. In Direct, the current conversion price is read in Report Wizard from the metrics CR, CPA, and “Conversions.” The price set in the “Maximum conversions” strategy is a limit for future conversions. The report’s actual CPA can land above or below that limit. How to calculate a lead price from spend and leads is covered in the article on CPA.
Conversion counts a visit, not every form submit
The Metrica glossary defines conversion as the share of goal visits in the total number of visits. A goal is an action the site owner wants: a page view, a button press, and the like. A goal visitor is someone who met the goal condition.
The goals help repeats conversion as the ratio of goal visits to all visits. Visitor conversion is the share of unique visitors who reached the goal. In one goal visit the same goal can complete several times. Completions per visitor is the average number of completions per unique goal visitor. Goal revenue is set in the interface as a static amount or passed with the price or order_price parameter.
Conversion is not the number of leads: sending the form again in the same visit raises completions, but not the number of goal visits. If you call every form fill a “lead,” the denominator will diverge from Metrica’s conversion. CTR is not added to that denominator: click-through rate and the share of goal visits are different ratios.
CPA in Direct is the price of a goal visit
In the performance-campaign statistics guide, “Conversions” is how many goal visits the ads brought, CR is the share of those visits among all visits, and CPA is the average spend per goal visit. The report is built in Report Wizard: period, goals, attribution model, then metrics. CR and CPA need Metrica goals. Revenue, profit, and ROI appear in the same report when a conversion value has been passed.
Those are Direct report fields for goal visits. They are not equal to “per goal completion” CPA and “per visitor” CPA from Metrica’s expenses report.
Four CPAs in the expenses report
In the “Sources, expenses, and ROI” report, spend is the sum without VAT from the file you passed. CPC is labeled as the cost of one click. Then four ratios:
| Metric | How it is calculated |
|---|---|
| CPA of a goal visit | Spend divided by goal visits |
| CPA of a goal visitor | Spend per goal visitors |
| CPA of a goal completion | Spend per completions |
| CPA of a purchase | Spend per purchases; ecommerce revenue is required |
A goal has to exist before a goal CPA. The formulas on the page are fractions with no separate subtraction of spam, robots, or invalid clicks. For the Market source, money amounts arrive in conventional units, 1 unit = 30 ₽, and can be updated for 90 days.
The CPA and ROI formulas on the same page divide spend by goal visits, goal visitors, goal completions, or purchases, and subtract spend from revenue or goal value. There is no separate term for “spam,” “off-target lead,” or “invalid click” in those fractions. The page itself cannot subtract spam from the report CPA: the ratio stays spend over every goal visit, visitor, completion, or purchase that landed in the denominator.
A teaching example, not a norm. Spend of 60,000 ₽ and 40 goal visits give a goal-visit CPA of 1,500 ₽. If the goal completed 80 times inside those same visits, the goal-completion CPA is 750 ₽. Both numbers are right for their denominators. Neither is called CPL, and neither subtracts the leads you yourself treat as spam. The share of spend with no buyer is counted outside these fractions: how not to mix it with clicks already refunded is covered in budget loss. The robot percent in Metrica is not subtracted from CPA automatically either — what it means is in the article on robot share.
The price in the “Maximum conversions” strategy does not replace this example. It limits future conversions. The report’s actual CPA can sit above or below the limit you set, because the report divides what already happened.