Acquisition
Beginner PronunciationEN/ˌækwɪˈzɪʃən/
Acquisition is the set of activity that brings a new visitor or customer to a product for the first time, together with the reporting that describes where they came from.
Reporting on acquisition has two layers. The volume layer counts how many visits, sessions and new users each origin produced; the quality layer asks what those arrivals did afterwards. Collapsing the two into one number is the usual failure, because a channel can lead on sessions and trail badly on conversion, and ranking channels by traffic alone rewards the cheapest clicks. Acquisition is also confused with activation, which starts after the arrival and describes the first moment of real value inside the product.
FAQ
Acquisition describes the arrival and is reported by source and channel. Activation happens afterwards and marks the first action showing the user reached real value; the channel that ranks first on acquisition can rank last on activation.