TikTok · Jan 2024 → Jul 2026 · Spend, Clicks & Survey
What did TikTok actually do when we funded it?
Monthly TikTok ad spend against two CAC readings — Northbeam clicks-only and Fairing survey-implied (spend ÷ survey share × total new customers) — across the ramp (2024), the wind-down (2025), and the zero-spend aftermath (2026).
GENERATED Jul 13, 2026 · NORTHBEAM CLICKS-ONLY, CASH · FAIRING Q2864 FIRST ORDERS · 2024 NC TOTALS ESTIMATED VIA 39% RESPONSE RATE
$1,034K
Total TikTok spend, 31 mo
$810K of it in 2024
7.3%
Peak survey share
Apr–May 2024, at ~$110–123K/mo
$220+
Click CAC at peak spend
what the dashboard said
~$90
Survey-implied CAC at peak
what customers said
~2.4%
Share today on $0 spend
the organic residual
Spend vs. Claimed Discovery — the dose-response
Bars = monthly TikTok spend. Line = share of new customers answering "TikTok" to the post-purchase survey. Dashed = the 2026 organic baseline (~2.4% with zero spend). Gap = survey off Sep 2025.
CAC, Two Lines
Click CAC vs. survey-implied CAC. Click line clipped at $800 for readability (it reached $4,800 during the wind-down as tracking collapsed). Survey line only shown for months with ≥$5K spend. Log scale.
Read
TikTok's claimed influence was buyable — in both directions. Share climbed 4.0% → 7.3% as spend ramped to ~$120K/month through spring 2024, then fell in lockstep when spend was cut in September 2024 (7.3% → 2.7% within five months). Few channels show this clean a dose-response in survey data; it means the spend was genuinely creating discovery, not just riding it.
The dashboard CAC that killed the channel was ~2–3× the customer-reported reality. During the funded era, click CAC read $183–$450 while survey-implied CAC ran $66–$114. Even adjusting for today's ~2.4% organic baseline (counting only share above it as paid-driven), peak-era incremental CAC works out to roughly $170 — still well under the click number the decision was made on.
The wind-down click CACs ($700–$4,800) were measurement artifacts, not performance. As budgets shrank, TikTok's already-weak click tracking collapsed to near-zero attributed customers while the survey kept registering 1.5–3% of buyers. Any future TikTok test should be judged on survey share and holdouts from day one — the click line will never be usable for this channel.
Two years later, TikTok still delivers ~2.4% of new customers for free. The zero-spend 2026 share (2.0–2.9%) is the residual: organic content, creator echoes, and brand presence built partly during the funded era. That's ~350–450 customers a month currently attributed to a channel with no budget line.
Method & caveats: 2024 monthly new-customer totals are estimated from survey volume ÷ 39.3% (the median response rate over the 15 months where both are known; observed range 36–42%) — 2025–26 totals are actuals from the Daily Spend Tracker. Survey share includes organic TikTok influence, so survey-implied CAC credits ad spend with some customers organic content produced — the baseline-adjusted figure in the insights corrects for this. Survey off Aug 18 – Oct 12, 2025. Click data: Northbeam clicks-only, cash. Correlation across the ramp is strong evidence but not a controlled experiment.
