Amazon New-to-Brand Metrics: How to Measure Customer Acquisition Beyond ROAS

Amazon new-to-brand metrics show how many of your sales come from first-time customers rather than repeat buyers. Amazon counts an order as new-to-brand when the shopper has not purchased from your brand in the previous 365 days. 

Together, these metrics answer a question ROAS cannot: are your ads winning new customers, or just re-buying the ones you already had?

Every advertiser watches ROAS, and it hides a blind spot. 

A campaign can post a beautiful return while quietly spending your budget on customers who would have bought anyway. That is not growth, it is paying full price for repeat business. 

New-to-brand metrics exist to catch exactly that, by separating the customers your ads actually won from the ones you already had.

That distinction matters more every year, and according to Amazon’s Q2 2026 earnings (2026), its advertising revenue grew 26%, nearly double the growth of its online store, so ad costs keep climbing. When every click costs more, knowing whether that spend buys new customers or recycles old ones is the difference between scaling and standing still.

What Are Amazon New-to-Brand Metrics?

New-to-brand (NTB) metrics are a set of Amazon advertising metrics that measure how many of your orders and sales come from first-time brand customers. 

Amazon models each shopper’s purchase history and flags an order as new-to-brand if that shopper has not bought from your brand on Amazon in the previous 365 days.

Two details shape how you read them. The measurement is at the brand level, so a shopper buying a different product line from you still counts as existing if they have purchased from your brand before. And the window is a rolling 12 months, so a customer who last bought 13 months ago counts as new again.

You can see these metrics only if you are brand registered, so access depends on Amazon Brand Registry. They report natively on Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon DSP, the ad types built to reach new audiences. They do not appear in standard Sponsored Products reporting, though Amazon Marketing Cloud can derive NTB data across every ad type, which we cover later.

The Key New-to-Brand Metrics and What Each Tells You

There are several NTB metrics, and each answers a slightly different question. Here is what they are and how to read them.

The first four tell you the scale of your acquisition: how many new customers and how much new revenue your ads are producing, and what share of your total they represent. A high percentage of orders that are new-to-brand means your advertising is pulling in fresh demand rather than preaching to existing buyers.

The metric that turns insight into decisions is NTB CAC, your cost to acquire a new customer, which you calculate by dividing ad spend by NTB orders. It is not a default column, but it is the number that lets you judge acquisition the way a growth marketer would, and it is the bridge to profitability we come back to below. On DSP, you also get extras like NTB purchase rate and NTB ROAS, which make the acquisition picture even clearer at the top of the funnel.

NTB Across the Funnel: Which Ad Types Win New Customers

Not every ad type pulls its weight on acquisition, and NTB data shows exactly which ones do. 

The pattern is consistent: the further up the funnel an ad sits, the more new customers it tends to reach.

Sponsored Products mostly meets demand that already exists, so while it still wins some new customers, it is not built for acquisition. Sponsored Display and Sponsored Brands reach wider, which is why they carry NTB reporting and usually a higher new-customer share. DSP sits furthest up the funnel, introducing your brand to relevant audiences before they are searching, which is why it tends to produce the most new-to-brand purchases.

This is also why reading each ad type on ROAS alone is a trap. DSP and upper-funnel Sponsored Brands campaigns often show a lower immediate ROAS precisely because they are doing the harder work of acquisition, not harvesting demand that was already there. NTB share is what reveals their true contribution.

Why NTB Matters More Than ROAS Alone

ROAS answers one question: how much revenue did each ad dollar return? 

It says nothing about who that revenue came from. A 6x ROAS built entirely on repeat customers and a 6x ROAS built on new customers look identical in your dashboard, but they mean completely different things for your business.

The first is maintenance. The second is growth. 

New customers can become repeat buyers, subscribe, and raise their lifetime value, so acquisition compounds in a way that re-buying existing customers never does. NTB metrics are what let you tell the two apart, which is why they belong alongside ROAS, not instead of it. Looking beyond ROAS with metrics like MER is how serious advertisers judge the real health of their spend.

This also reframes what a “bad” campaign looks like. An upper-funnel campaign with a modest ROAS but a high new-to-brand share may be your most valuable one, because it is buying future revenue, not just today’s. Judging it on ROAS alone would tell you to cut the very spend that is growing your brand. Pairing NTB with your other ad metrics that matter stops that mistake.

How to Use NTB to Measure and Grow Acquisition

Reading the metrics is step one.  Using them to make better budget decisions is where the value is.

What’s a Good New-to-Brand Percentage?

There is no universal number, and anyone who gives you one is guessing. 

A newer brand still building its customer base should expect and want a high NTB percentage, often well above half of orders. A mature brand with strong repeat business will naturally run lower, because many of its buyers are returning customers, and that is healthy too.

For a reference point, according to SellerApp (2026), the Amazon DSP new-to-brand purchase rate stood at 36.5%, which shows new customers make up a meaningful share of DSP-attributed sales. Use benchmarks like that as context, not targets. The right NTB percentage is the one that matches your stage and your goals, judged as a trend over time rather than a single figure.

New-to-Brand CAC vs Customer Lifetime Value

This is the comparison that decides whether acquisition is actually profitable. Your NTB CAC is what you pay to win a customer; your lifetime value is what that customer is worth over time. As long as CAC sits comfortably below LTV, acquisition pays off even when the first order looks unprofitable on ROAS alone.

That is why the back end matters as much as the ad. A new customer only justifies their acquisition cost if they come back, so growing repeat purchases through strong post-purchase experience and Subscribe and Save is what makes aggressive acquisition safe. 

Chasing new customers without a plan to retain them is how brands overspend on a leaky bucket.

Shifting Budget Toward Acquisition

NTB data tells you which campaigns and ad types earn their acquisition keep. Sponsored Products tends to capture shoppers already searching for you, while Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and DSP are built to reach new audiences, so they usually carry the higher NTB share.

Use the metrics to fund the mix deliberately. Point acquisition budget at the channels proving they bring new customers, then retarget the shoppers they introduce to pull them over the line. Building this into a deliberate PPC strategy, rather than judging every campaign on ROAS, is how brands grow instead of plateauing.

A Worked Example: Is Your Acquisition Profitable?

Numbers make the CAC-versus-LTV test concrete, so here is a simple illustration. Treat the figures as an example, not a promise of results.

Say you spend 10,000 dollars on a Sponsored Brands and DSP acquisition push in a month, and it drives 400 new-to-brand orders. Your NTB CAC is 10,000 divided by 400, which is 25 dollars to acquire each new customer. On its own, that number means very little.

Now bring in lifetime value. Suppose your average customer, once acquired, goes on to spend 90 dollars with you over the next year through repeat purchases and subscriptions. Your 25 dollar acquisition cost has bought a 90 dollar customer, so even if that first order barely broke even on ROAS, the campaign is clearly profitable once you count the full relationship.

Flip the inputs, and the lesson holds. If the same spend drove only 120 new customers, your CAC jumps to about 83 dollars, uncomfortably close to your 90 dollar LTV, and the campaign is barely worth running. Same ad spend, completely different verdict, and ROAS alone would never have told you which was which.

The Limits of New-to-Brand Metrics

NTB is the cleanest acquisition signal Amazon gives you, but it is not perfect, and using it well means knowing where it bends.

The 12-month lookback is blunt: A customer who bought 13 months ago counts as brand new again, so your NTB numbers slightly overstate true first-time acquisition. It is close enough to be useful, not precise enough to treat as gospel.

It is measured at the brand level: A loyal customer trying a completely different product line from you is still counted as existing, so NTB does not capture cross-line expansion. For most brands, that is fine, but it is worth remembering when you read the share.

Attribution can mislead you: DSP often introduces a shopper who later searches and buys through Sponsored Ads, which then takes the conversion credit. Cutting DSP because Sponsored Ads “won” the sale can quietly weaken your whole acquisition funnel. Untangling these paths is exactly what Amazon Marketing Cloud is for, since it reveals assisted conversions and derives NTB across every ad type, including Sponsored Products.

High NTB is not automatically the goal: A brand running 100% new-to-brand with no repeat business is not winning, it is failing to retain. Read NTB next to retention and lifetime value, never on its own, and it becomes one of the most honest growth signals you have.

Conclusion

New-to-brand metrics turn a vague sense that your ads are “working” into a clear answer about whether they are actually growing your business. Watch NTB orders and share to see how much new demand you are winning, calculate NTB CAC to price that growth, and judge it against lifetime value to know if it pays. 

Read alongside ROAS and retention, NTB is the most honest acquisition signal Amazon offers. This is the kind of measurement AMZDUDES, a full-service Amazon agency, builds into every account. One brand grew to over 96% new-to-brand customers during a 90-day scale, and a beauty and personal care brand added 44,498 new-to-brand customers through acquisition-focused advertising. 

If you want to know whether your ads are buying growth or just repeat sales, then let us break down your acquisition the right way.

Book Your Free Call Today with AMZDUDES

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What does new-to-brand mean on Amazon? 
New-to-brand means an order or customer that is a first purchase from your brand on Amazon within the last 12 months. Amazon models each shopper’s purchase history to decide, at the brand level, whether they are new or returning. It is the cleanest way to see whether your ads are acquiring customers or reselling to existing ones, which is why AMZDUDES tracks it alongside ROAS for every brand it manages.

Which ad types show new-to-brand metrics? 
NTB metrics report natively on Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon DSP, the ad types designed to reach new audiences. They do not appear in standard Sponsored Products reporting. To see new-to-brand data across all ad types, including Sponsored Products, you need Amazon Marketing Cloud, which AMZDUDES uses to give brands a full-funnel view of acquisition.

What is a good new-to-brand percentage? 
There is no universal number. Newer brands building a customer base should expect a high NTB percentage, while mature brands with strong repeat business will run lower, and both can be healthy. Judge it as a trend against your own goals rather than a fixed target. AMZDUDES sets NTB benchmarks per brand based on stage and category rather than applying one number to everyone.

How do I calculate my cost to acquire a new customer? 
Divide your ad spend by your number of new-to-brand orders to get NTB CAC, the cost to acquire one new customer. Then compare it to customer lifetime value: as long as CAC sits below LTV, acquisition is profitable even if the first order looks weak on ROAS. AMZDUDES models CAC against LTV before recommending how aggressively a brand should spend on acquisition.

Is a high new-to-brand percentage always good? 
No. A very high NTB share with little repeat business means you are acquiring customers but not keeping them, which is expensive and unsustainable. The goal is profitable acquisition that turns into repeat purchases and rising lifetime value. AMZDUDES pairs acquisition strategy with retention levers like Subscribe and Save so new customers actually pay off.

How is NTB different from ROAS? 
ROAS tells you revenue per ad dollar but not who bought. NTB tells you whether that revenue came from new or returning customers. A strong ROAS built on repeat buyers is maintenance; a strong NTB share is growth. Reading them together, as AMZDUDES does, gives a far truer picture of advertising performance than either number alone.