Cohort LTV

Definition

Cohort LTV: Cohort LTV (lifetime value) measures the cumulative revenue per customer within a specific acquisition cohort at fixed time intervals (7, 30, 60, 90 days). It answers which channels, campaigns, or creatives bring in the most valuable customers.

# Cohort LTV Cohort LTV groups customers by their acquisition month (or week, or campaign) and tracks their cumulative revenue at fixed checkpoints — typically 7d, 30d, 60d, 90d, 180d, and 365d. A healthy DTC cohort's 90-day LTV often reaches 1.4-1.8x of its 7-day LTV, meaning repeat purchases meaningfully extend unit economics. ## Why it matters Acquisition CPA only tells you what a customer costs on day 0. Cohort LTV tells you what that customer is worth by day 30 or 90. A campaign with a high CPA but a high 90-day LTV is often more profitable than a "cheap" campaign whose customers never come back. It is also the correct denominator for [payback period](/glossary/payback-period) calculations. ## How Admaxxer surfaces it Admaxxer computes cohort LTV at the ad-set and ad level at 7/30/90 days in the Attribution dashboard. You can see which Meta ads are acquiring repeat buyers versus one-and-done customers, and the [Claude agent](/features/claude-agent) can surface the top and bottom 10% of ads by 90-day LTV in a single chat message. ## Example Two Meta prospecting ads both have a $35 CPA. Ad A's buyers have a 90-day LTV of $62 (1.77x). Ad B's buyers have a 90-day LTV of $38 (1.09x). Under CPA alone Ad B looks comparable; under cohort LTV Ad A is 60% more profitable.

Most related

Continue exploring the DTC ad-analytics vocabulary — every term in this glossary cross-links to the next.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is cohort LTV the same as customer lifetime value?

Cohort LTV is a time-windowed slice of LTV (e.g., 90-day LTV of the March cohort). True lifetime value is the sum of all revenue a customer ever produces — useful but only knowable in hindsight.

What is a good 90-day cohort LTV?

It depends on category. Consumables (coffee, supplements) often hit 1.8-2.5x of day-0 AOV; durable goods (apparel, furniture) typically land at 1.1-1.3x. Compare against your CAC, not against other brands.

How soon should 90-day LTV exceed CPA?

For most DTC brands, break-even by day 60-90 is the target. Payback longer than 120 days usually means you are under-pricing or over-paying for acquisition.

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