Amazon new-to-brand metrics identify attributed customers or purchases that meet Amazon's defined brand purchase-history criteria. Use them to assess acquisition alongside campaign cost and product economics. A new-to-brand classification is not proof that a shopper has never encountered the brand or that advertising caused the purchase.
Amazon's performance-metric documentation uses the previous 12 months of brand purchase history for its new-to-brand determination. This is a defined lookback, not a declaration that someone has never encountered the brand anywhere.
What do Amazon new-to-brand metrics measure?
Check whether the report shows purchases, sales, a share of purchases, or a cost-related metric. Use the definition for that format and account. A percentage without its denominator is easy to misread and difficult to compare across reports.
For an illustrative report with 100 attributed purchases and 60 classified new-to-brand purchases, the share is 60%. That says something about those attributed purchases. It does not mean 60% of all brand customers were acquired by advertising during the period.
Compare new-to-brand metrics by campaign objective
A campaign aimed at people already interested in the brand may have a different customer mix from a broader discovery campaign. Read the mix alongside cost, sales, product, and the stated purpose. Do not raise acquisition spending merely to improve a percentage.
The branded-versus-non-branded guide supplies a complementary intent view. A generic query is not itself a customer-history test, and a brand query can still lead to a purchase classified as new-to-brand.
New-to-brand purchases vs customer lifetime value
A first observed purchase within the lookback does not reveal future retention, lifetime value, or the profit available to pay for acquisition. Those questions require additional evidence and consistent cost treatment.
If using repeat-purchase assumptions to justify spending, show where they came from and which products or cohorts they describe. Use break-even contribution as a transparent starting point. Treat a longer-term allowance as an explicit business hypothesis rather than a property of the new-to-brand label.
- Record the campaign's acquisition objective.
- Keep metric definitions and date ranges consistent.
- Show absolute results as well as percentages.
- Document customer-value assumptions separately.
Why new-to-brand attribution does not prove incrementality
A purchase attributed to an ad is not automatically a purchase that would not otherwise have occurred. New-to-brand reporting adds customer-history context to attribution; it does not remove this limitation.
Where a budget decision requires stronger evidence, define an appropriate experiment or measurement design and its practical constraints. Amazon Marketing Cloud can support more detailed analysis for eligible accounts, but more detailed paths still need careful interpretation.
Use new-to-brand metrics to describe the attributed acquisition mix accurately. Pair them with economics and stronger measurement where a decision depends on proving incremental growth.
Source material
Amazon Ads: performance metrics and new-to-brand definitions
