How Amazon Brands Should Think About New to Brand Customers

TL;DR

What to expect from this article

Amazon brands usually judge advertising on immediate efficiency, through ROAS and ACoS. New to brand metrics add a different question, which is whether the brand is generating sales from customers who have not bought from it on Amazon in the previous twelve months. This covers what the metric actually measures, how to separate acquisition from existing demand, how to identify the products that introduce customers to the brand, and how to extend the analysis past the first purchase.

Key takeaways

A sale from a new customer and a sale from a returning one do different jobs. Both matter, and only one expands the customer base.

The highest ROAS campaign is not necessarily the strongest acquisition campaign. First time customers cost more to win, so acquisition efficiency needs judging separately from repeat demand.

New to brand should lead to a second question, which is what happens next. A first purchase is worth far more when it leads to repeat buying or movement into the rest of the catalog.

Intro

Two Amazon campaigns each generate a hundred thousand dollars in sales. They look equally successful.

Now suppose eighty percent of one campaign's purchases come from customers who have already bought the brand, while the other brings in mostly first time buyers. Same revenue, very different growth story.

This is the problem new to brand metrics help solve. Amazon defines new to brand customers as shoppers purchasing from a brand for the first time on Amazon within a twelve month lookback window.

That distinction adds a layer to advertising measurement. Instead of asking only how much revenue the advertising generated, you can ask how much of that revenue expanded the customer base. For brands trying to grow rather than harvest existing demand, that is an important difference.

What new to brand actually means

The definition matters, because new to brand does not mean the customer has never encountered the brand.

They may know it from retail. They may have visited the website. They may have seen a creator talk about the product. They may even have bought the brand somewhere other than Amazon. The metric is based only on whether the shopper has purchased from the brand on Amazon during the previous twelve months.

So it is better understood as new to purchasing this brand on Amazon within the previous twelve months. That makes it useful, and it gives the metric clear boundaries.

It changes how you read performance

ROAS tells you how much attributed revenue advertising generated relative to spend. It does not tell you whether that revenue came from someone discovering the brand or someone who already knows and buys it.

That distinction matters because repeat demand is easier to convert. Someone searching directly for your brand already has intent. A returning customer already trusts the product. A shopper meeting the brand through a non brand category search has considerably more work to do before purchasing.

Amazon notes that driving first time purchases can cost more than driving repeat purchases, which is why new to brand metrics deserve consideration alongside ROAS when acquisition is the objective.

That creates two different advertising jobs. One campaign efficiently captures existing demand. Another introduces the brand to people who have never bought it on Amazon. Both can be valuable, and they should not be judged against the same efficiency target by default.

Measure what a new customer costs

Once you know how many new to brand customers advertising produces, work out what you are paying for them. Divide advertising spend by new to brand customers and you have an acquisition cost.

Suppose Campaign A spends twenty thousand dollars and acquires two thousand new to brand customers, while Campaign B spends the same and acquires five hundred. Their total attributed sales might look similar, and their acquisition economics clearly are not.

That does not automatically make Campaign A better. Campaign B may produce larger orders, stronger margins, or more valuable repeat behavior. The point is that the metric gives you another dimension to investigate, rather than letting every customer disappear inside a total sales figure.

Find the products that introduce customers to the brand

Not every ASIN plays the same role in acquisition. Some products have accessible prices, broad use cases, strong reviews, or simple value propositions that make them natural entry points, and analyzing which promoted products generate the most new to brand purchases identifies them.

That creates a useful portfolio question. Which products are best at introducing customers to the brand, and is that the same as the products generating the most revenue?

Often it is not. Imagine a skincare brand selling cleanser, serum, moisturizer, and sunscreen. The moisturizer generates the most revenue, and the cleanser brings in the most new to brand customers. If cleanser buyers later purchase serum or moisturizer, the value of advertising the cleanser extends well past its own order. Its job is not really to sell cleanser. It is functioning as an entry point into the portfolio.

Read percentage and volume together

A percentage without volume misleads. Campaign A generates a thousand purchases at seventy percent new to brand. Campaign B generates ten thousand purchases at thirty percent. Campaign A has the better percentage and Campaign B brings in far more new customers.

The reverse problem exists too. A large campaign may acquire more new customers simply because it holds most of the budget, while a smaller campaign acquires them much more efficiently.

Which is why the analysis needs several measures at once. New to brand customers tells you acquisition volume. The percentage tells you how acquisition oriented the customer mix is. Acquisition cost tells you what you paid. New to brand sales tells you the immediate revenue. None of them is sufficient alone.

Compare acquisition across advertising strategies

New customers enter through different parts of the advertising ecosystem. Sponsored Products captures shoppers already searching for relevant products. Sponsored Brands introduces the brand more prominently during category discovery. Display and other audience based advertising reaches shoppers at different points in the journey.

Comparing purchasers, new to brand customers, and new to brand percentage across ad types is worth doing, and the purpose is not to crown one universal acquisition winner. It is to understand what each part of the media mix is actually doing.

If one strategy consistently introduces new customers, judge it partly on acquisition. If another mainly converts returning customers efficiently, judge it on that. Then allocate budget by role rather than asking every campaign to maximize the same number.

The first purchase is only the beginning

This is where the analysis becomes more useful than reporting a percentage.

A first purchase creates the possibility of another, and that possibility varies enormously by category. Coffee bought monthly behaves nothing like a durable product replaced every five years. A single product brand behaves nothing like a portfolio of complementary products. A low margin entry product becomes considerably more valuable if the customers who start there reliably move into higher margin ones.

So the next questions are whether new customers purchase again, how long that takes, whether they repurchase the same ASIN or move into others, which entry product produces the strongest downstream behavior, and which acquisition strategy brings in customers with the strongest longer term value.

Amazon has published guidance on understanding the value of new to brand shoppers beyond immediate sales, which is the right framing. The value of acquisition often cannot be read from the first order.

Amazon Marketing Cloud connects those questions

Standard campaign reporting tells you what happened inside individual campaigns. Amazon Marketing Cloud helps investigate how customer behavior connects across products, ad types, audiences, and time.

That makes it possible to examine which ASINs act as entry points, which advertising strategies contribute to acquisition, and how new and returning customers behave differently, rather than stopping at a single campaign and a single conversion event.

These are not bidding questions. They are growth questions, and that is where the tool earns its complexity. Not because it produces more reports, but because it lets the brand ask better questions of the data.

It can change audience strategy

Once you can separate existing customers from potential new ones, audience strategy gets more deliberate. Amazon has introduced new to brand capabilities that let advertisers put greater weight on shoppers who have not purchased from the brand in the previous twelve months.

The principle is simple. If acquisition is the objective, understand how much of the budget is actually reaching people who could become new buyers.

Without that distinction, advertising naturally concentrates spend on whoever is easiest to convert. Those people usually already know the brand. Efficiency improves. Customer acquisition does not.

Do not optimize the percentage in isolation

Once brands start measuring new to brand, the temptation is to maximize it. That creates a different measurement problem.

A campaign at ninety percent new to brand can still be inefficient. Those customers may be expensive to acquire, margins may be weak, order values may be low, and they may never buy again.

The metric tells you who generated the sale. It does not tell you whether the sale was economically worth making. Which is why it belongs alongside acquisition cost, contribution margin, order value, advertising efficiency, repeat behavior, and longer term customer value.

The objective is not the highest possible percentage. It is economically valuable customer growth.

A practical framework

For brands that want this to become a decision making tool rather than a reporting line, start with five questions.

How much of the business comes from new against returning customers? Establish the baseline before changing any budgets.

Which campaigns and strategies acquire new customers? Separate acquisition from demand capture and repeat purchasing.

Which ASINs are the strongest entry points? Identify them rather than assuming the highest revenue product should carry all acquisition investment.

What does a new customer cost? Measure acquisition economics alongside ACoS and ROAS.

What happens after the first purchase? Look at repeat purchases, movement across the catalog, and longer term value where the data supports it.

Those five move new to brand from a metric to a framework.

Conclusion

Amazon brands do not grow because they generate more orders. They grow when enough of those orders expand the customer base and those customers turn out to be economically valuable over time.

That is why this metric matters. A high ROAS campaign may be excellent at capturing demand that already existed. Another may look less efficient on the first transaction and be far stronger at introducing new customers. A hero ASIN may drive the most revenue while a different product quietly functions as the gateway into the catalog.

Those are different roles and they deserve different measurement. Measure who is new, understand where they entered, know what it cost to acquire them, then measure what happens next.

Because the real value of a new to brand customer is not the first purchase. It is what that first purchase becomes.