For years, Amazon advertising made it almost impossible to answer one of the most important commercial questions: “Are my ads actually bringing in new customers—or am I just paying to re-sell to people who would have bought anyway?”
Because Amazon’s reporting treated every conversion the same, brands couldn’t distinguish between acquisition and re-purchase. Strong ROAS could still mask weak brand growth.
New-to-Brand (NTB) metrics were introduced to fix exactly this blind spot. For Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, Amazon now shows what portion of attributed sales comes from shoppers who haven’t purchased from your brand in the last 12 months. More recently, Amazon added Brand Metrics—a broader framework that estimates your brand’s awareness, consideration and purchase performance across your category.
Together, these tools give Amazon advertisers something they’ve never really had: a measurable view of brand growth.
What “new-to-brand” actually means
Amazon looks back at a customer’s 12-month purchase history. If they haven’t bought from your brand within that period, any conversion attributed to your ad counts as new-to-brand.
For Sponsored Brands and Sponsored Display, Amazon reports:
- NTB orders and NTB sales
- The percentage of your orders and sales that are NTB
This helps distinguish between campaigns that mainly drive loyalty and repeat purchase versus those that genuinely acquire new customers.
Brand Metrics then adds context by estimating how many shoppers in your category are aware of your brand, actively considering it, and ultimately choosing it.
How to use NTB and Brand Metrics in practice
These metrics only become powerful when aligned to campaign intent. Not every campaign should behave the same.
For prospecting or upper-funnel campaigns, you want a healthy share of NTB orders—even if ROAS is lower. Acquisition is the point.
For retention or upsell campaigns, it’s normal that most conversions come from existing customers. These campaigns should be judged on repeat behaviour and LTV, not NTB share.
A simple way to structure this:
- Prospecting = NTB focus (higher NTB %, broader ads, more creative formats)
- Retention = LTV focus (repeat rate, upsell success, purchase frequency)
Brand Metrics then guides where to allocate spend. If purchase rates are high but awareness is low, you may need more top-of-funnel investment. If awareness is high but purchase is weak, the issue likely lies on the product detail page—content, pricing, reviews or competitiveness.
Used together, NTB and Brand Metrics allow you to shift from asking “Which ads sold something yesterday?” to “Which ads are building the customer base we want six months from now?”
The bottom line: NTB turns Amazon into a true brand-building channel
New-to-Brand metrics help you measure whether your advertising is attracting genuinely new customers or simply harvesting existing demand. Brand Metrics expands this view into a full-funnel picture, revealing where your brand is strong, where it’s underperforming, and where new investment will have the greatest impact.
For brands aiming to grow on Amazon—not just trade on it—these tools change the conversation. They allow you to optimise for customer acquisition, not just ROAS, and build a long-term strategy based on expanding your brand footprint rather than merely converting the same shoppers again and again.