This glossary explains the most common metrics you see in Venon reports.
Use it when you want to quickly understand what a metric means and how it is calculated.
Revenue and profit metrics
Revenue: total order revenue for the selected period.
CM1: Net revenue - product costs.
CM2: CM1 - shipping costs - payment fees.
CM3: CM2 - ad spend. Net revenue is revenue after applicable taxes, refunds and discounts.
Contribution Margin: the profit left after the selected costs are subtracted.
Marketing metrics
ROAS: Return on ad spend. Revenue / ad spend.
MER: Marketing efficiency ratio. Total revenue / total ad spend.
CAC: Customer acquisition cost. Ad spend / new customers.
NC CAC: New customer acquisition cost. Ad spend / new customers.
Order value metrics
AOV: Average order value. Revenue / orders.
LTV: Lifetime value. Revenue from a customer over time.
Customer metrics
New customers: customers who placed their first order.
Returning customers: customers who ordered before and came back.
Repeat purchase rate: in the Retention Report, the share of customers acquired in the selected period who place another order within 365 days of their first order.
Attribution metrics
CV: conversion value. Revenue attributed to a channel, campaign, ad set, or ad.
NC CV: new customer conversion value. Revenue from new customers attributed to a channel, campaign, ad set, or ad.
Purchases: orders attributed to a channel, campaign, ad set, or ad.
NC Purchases: new customer orders attributed to a channel, campaign, ad set, or ad.
Efficiency metrics
POAS: profit on ad spend. Profit (CM3) / ad spend. On the dashboard and Pixel page, POAS uses profit after ad spend (CM3). API or AI results may use a different profit basis; check the definition before comparing them.
CPA: cost per acquisition. Ad spend / all attributed purchases, including new and returning customers. This is different from CAC, which only counts new customers.
Loaded CAC: (ad spend + product costs + shipping costs + payment costs of first orders) / new customers. It includes the cost of fulfilling those first orders as well as the ads used to acquire the customers.
CPM: cost per 1,000 impressions. (ad spend / impressions) × 1,000. The Google Ads drill-down shows this metric.
Break-Even ROAS: in an order's cost breakdown, net revenue / CM2. CM2 is the amount left after product costs, shipping and payment fees, before ad spend. The calculation is unavailable when CM2 is zero or negative.
New-customer metrics
NC ROAS: attributed new customer revenue / ad spend for the channel, campaign, ad set or ad you are viewing.
NC MER (New Customer MER): total new customer revenue / total ad spend. This is the store-wide view rather than a single channel's attributed return.
NC Revenue: revenue from first-time buyers. In attribution reports it is the new customer revenue credited to the selected channel, campaign, ad set or ad.
NC AOV: new customer revenue / new customers. It shows the average value of a first order.
Profit and lifetime-value metrics
Profit Margin: on the dashboard, (Profit / total revenue) × 100. Profit is CM3. This differs from Profit (CM3)%, which divides CM3 by net revenue.
Net Margin: in the order cost breakdown, (CM2 / net revenue) × 100. This order-level metric is before ad spend; it is not the dashboard Profit Margin.
CLV : CAC: in the Retention Report, average lifetime net revenue of paid-acquired customers / paid customer acquisition cost. Paid CAC is ad spend divided by the number of paid-acquired customers. Retention and email costs are not included in this CAC. The value follows the report's refund setting. A ratio above 1 means this lifetime revenue exceeds acquisition cost; it does not by itself prove profit after product and fulfilment costs.
Payback: in Cohort Analysis, the checkmark means cumulative revenue per customer is at least CAC, or LTV:CAC is at least 1. This is a revenue-based payback indicator, not a calculation of profit-based payback time.
For the full reports, see The Retention Report and Using Cohort Analysis.
Ad-platform-reported metrics
On the Meta Ads and Google Ads Pixel drill-downs, the platform logo identifies a separate set of platform-reported columns. The matching columns without that logo are Venon attribution metrics.
ROAS with the platform logo: platform-reported conversion value / ad spend.
CV with the platform logo: the conversion value reported by Meta or Google.
Purchases with the platform logo: the purchase conversions reported by that platform.
These columns are for comparison, not extra sales to add to Venon's totals. Platforms use their own attribution rules and reporting settings. See Why numbers differ between Venon, Shopify, Meta, and Google.
Simple rule
Use revenue metrics to understand sales.
Use cost and CM metrics to understand profit.
Use ROAS, MER, and CAC to understand marketing efficiency.