New-to-brand (NTB) is a reporting classification that splits ad-attributed sales into two groups: purchases from shoppers who already buy a brand, and purchases from shoppers who, as far as the platform can see, do not. Amazon introduced the label in January 2019 and defines it with a single rule: an order counts as new to brand if the shopper has not bought from that brand on Amazon in the previous 12 months. The metric exists because return on ad spend (ROAS) cannot distinguish between an advertiser buying its own loyal customers back and an advertiser reaching people who would not otherwise have bought. Other retail media networks have since adopted the same structure.

How the classification works

The calculation happens after attribution. A shopper sees or clicks an ad and buys within the attribution window; Amazon credits the purchase to the campaign, then checks the account's history. Any purchase from the same brand in the preceding 12 months makes the order existing.

Two definitional details shape the result. First, the brand is the unit, not the product. Amazon's DSP reporting guide states that a brand is identified "by the name in the byline" of the product listing. A shopper who bought a brand's shampoo in March and its conditioner in October is existing. Second, only Amazon purchases count as history, so a five-year customer of the brand's own website is new to brand on a first Amazon order.

The DSP guide lists seven columns:

  • NTB purchases - first-time purchases of the brand over the one-year lookback
  • NTB units sold - units within those purchases, since one order can contain several
  • NTB product sales - the local-currency value of those purchases
  • Percent of purchases NTB - the share of attributed purchases that were new to brand; Subscribe and Save sign-ups and video rentals count as purchases
  • NTB ROAS - NTB sales divided by total cost
  • NTB effective cost per purchase (eCPP) - total cost divided by NTB purchases
  • NTB purchase rate - NTB purchases divided by impressions

A worked example: a Sponsored Brands campaign spends $5,000 and is credited with 400 purchases worth $16,000, of which 240 are new to brand worth $9,000. Headline ROAS is 3.2. NTB ROAS is 1.8, NTB share is 60%, and NTB eCPP is about $20.83. NTB ROAS divides only new-customer sales by all spend, so it trails headline ROAS unless every purchase is new.

The lookback is separate from the attribution window, which the guide sets at 14 days. Since January 1, 2026, some view-based conversions have used a shorter-window model, with old figures kept in a "Purchases (all views)" family; Amazon has not said how this flows into NTB columns.

Where it is reported

At launch it covered Sponsored Brands and display and video bought through Amazon DSP; according to Marketing Dive, Sponsored Products, the cost-per-click (CPC) format for individual listings, was not included. The DSP guide applies them to campaigns run after November 1, 2018. Sponsored Display gained NTB metrics for product targeting and audience campaigns on October 14, 2021, according to an archived Amazon announcement. Third-party guides reviewed in October 2026 list no NTB columns in standard Sponsored Products reports.

The metric has also moved from reporting into buying. On May 6, 2025, Amazon launched a New-To-Brand shoppers audience for bid boosting in Sponsored Brands across 21 countries. Amazon said advertisers who raised these bids by 100% or more saw twice as many NTB orders, without disclosing a control group. In August 2025 it added opposite-facing audiences, such as "Purchased brand's product", so one campaign can bid up both new and returning shoppers.

Origin and evolution

PPC Land reported the launch on January 23, 2019, listing four metrics: total NTB purchases, total NTB sales, NTB purchase rate and cost per NTB customer.

At unBoxed on October 15, 2024, Amazon introduced long-term sales (LTS) metrics, which project the sales a brand can expect over the next 12 months from a new-to-brand shopper's detail page views, branded searches, add-to-carts and purchases. The LTS announcement words the rule slightly differently: a shopper is new to brand "if they haven't completed a conversion with a brand in the last 12 months". Conversion is a broader term than purchase, and Amazon has not said whether the two definitions are applied identically.

Other networks copied the 12-month rule but not always the unit. Walmart Connect in Canada lists seven NTB metrics, all for Sponsored Products, the format Amazon left out. In the US, Walmart Connect counts a buyer as new when they have not bought the advertised item set, rather than the brand, on Walmart in 12 months. It reported medians of 44% new-to-brand buyers for offsite connected TV in fiscal 2026 and 52% for offsite display in 2025. Because the units differ, Walmart and Amazon percentages are not directly comparable.

Why it matters

NTB gave retail media a vocabulary for growth that ROAS lacks. A brand's existing customers convert cheaply, so campaigns judged on ROAS alone drift toward them; NTB share is the counterweight Amazon offers. For an upper-funnel demand-side platform campaign, low ROAS with a high NTB share tells a different story from high ROAS built on existing buyers.

Amazon's automated products now embed that framing. When it renamed its DSP as DVA and relaunched Ads Agent on September 29, 2026, Full-Funnel Campaigns became available to US advertisers measured on new-to-brand and long-term sales. Amazon's launch page claims 29% lower cost per purchase for NTB customers in the beta; it does not state the $100 minimum daily budget PPC Land reported.

Limitations and disputes

The metric measures novelty from the platform's vantage point, not the brand's. Because only Amazon history counts, a direct-to-consumer brand's long-standing customers appear new. Perpetua, an ad software vendor, listed this among four blind spots in August 2026, alongside lapsed buyers returning on day 366 and cross-sell to existing customers, which brand-level counting ignores.

The second problem is the window. Marketing Dive noted in 2019 that 12 months fits poorly with high-priced products replaced less often than once a year. Kate Greubel of Omnicom's Flywheel told AdExchanger in April 2025 that Flywheel had arranged a five-year lookback through Amazon Marketing Cloud.

The third, and most contested, is the confusion of new with incremental. An NTB purchase may still have happened without the ad. Jason Colon of Night Market told AdExchanger that "the retailers or platforms only have access to a sliver of information". Only controlled experiments, covered in PPC Land's incrementality and iROAS explainers, can answer that. And the seller of the media defines, counts and now optimises toward the metric.

How other platforms define new customers

Google, Meta and Microsoft built comparable controls into bidding rather than reporting. Google added a customer acquisition goal to Performance Max on April 26, 2022, finding existing customers through Customer Match lists, conversion tags or autodetection; its help page now lists three modes across Search, Shopping, Performance Max and Demand Gen. PPC Land reported that autodetection treats anyone who bought in the previous 540 days as returning, a figure the help page does not state, and that since October 22, 2026 advertisers can multiply a new customer's value by 1.1x to 5x.

Meta's targeted offers, introduced for US shops in August 2025, define a new customer as someone who has not bought from a Facebook or Instagram shop in two years. In sales campaigns advertisers define existing customers themselves, an option Meta extended to all sales campaigns in June 2024, according to Jon Loomer. Microsoft Advertising followed with a new customer goal for Performance Max in January 2026.

The result is that one shopper can hold three statuses at once: new to brand on Amazon after 12 months, returning at Google within 540 days, and existing at Meta within two years.

What it is not

  • New customer acquisition (Google, Microsoft) is a bidding goal driven by the advertiser's own lists. NTB began as an after-the-fact label computed from retailer sales data.
  • Brand halo counts sales of a brand's other products after an ad for one product. It concerns what was bought; NTB, who bought it (see halo effect).
  • Incremental sales are purchases that would not have happened without the ad, measured by experiment. An NTB sale may or may not be incremental.
  • New-to-category describes a shopper new to the product category rather than the brand, a narrower group that NTB includes but does not isolate.

Recent developments

Three of the eight metrics on Amazon's benchmark help page, updated on November 11, 2026, are new-to-brand measures: cost per purchase, share of purchases and purchase rate. None of the 16 recommended actions suggests spending less. A campaign above benchmark on NTB share is told to "increase budget allocation to prospecting campaigns targeting new customers"; one below it, to "balance budget between prospecting and retargeting campaigns".

Social commerce splits the term further. TikTok Shop's Brand LIVE Impact guide, covered on November 2, 2026, defines four tiers - new to LIVE, new to Shop, new to Brand and new to Platform, the last combining TikTok Shop with the brand's own website. None states a lookback period.

Standard setters want windows that vary by product. IAB Europe's Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2.1, published on January 22, 2026, ask networks to report new-to-brand against five purchase-cycle buckets, from up to two weeks to 52 weeks or more. A travel addendum, opened for comment from September 17 to October 23, 2026, renames the metric new-to-advertiser and sets a three-year lookback. "New" has moved from a report column into the objective automated systems pursue, while platforms still disagree on what the word means.

Timeline

  • November 1, 2018: Earliest campaign date to which Amazon applies NTB reporting
  • January 2019: Amazon introduces new-to-brand metrics for Sponsored Brands and Amazon DSP, with a 12-month lookback
  • October 14, 2021: NTB metrics extend to Sponsored Display product targeting and audience campaigns
  • April 26, 2022: Google announces a customer acquisition goal for Performance Max
  • June 2024: Meta extends audience segments, including existing customers, to all sales campaigns
  • October 15, 2024: Amazon introduces long-term sales metrics tied to new-to-brand shoppers
  • April 25, 2025: AdExchanger reports agency criticism of platform-defined new and incremental metrics
  • May 6, 2025: Amazon launches the New-To-Brand shoppers audience for Sponsored Brands bid boosting
  • August 2025: Meta defines new customers for targeted offers with a two-year lookback; Amazon adds existing-customer bid boost audiences on August 26
  • January 1, 2026: Amazon changes view-based attribution for Sponsored Brands, vCPM Sponsored Display and DSP Store inventory
  • January 15, 2026: Microsoft Advertising announces a new customer acquisition goal for Performance Max
  • January 22, 2026: IAB Europe publishes Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2.1 with five NTB purchase-cycle buckets
  • September 17, 2026: IAB Europe opens a travel draft replacing NTB with a three-year new-to-advertiser metric
  • September 29, 2026: Amazon renames its DSP as DVA and opens Full-Funnel Campaigns measured on NTB and long-term sales
  • October 22, 2026: Google introduces 1.1x to 5x multipliers for new customer value
  • October 23, 2026: Comment period on IAB Europe's travel draft closes
  • November 2, 2026: TikTok Shop's Brand LIVE Impact guide sets out four new-customer tiers, including new to Brand
  • November 11, 2026: Amazon updates its benchmarks help page, with three NTB metrics among the eight benchmarked

Summary

Who: Amazon Ads created the metric and reports it for Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display and its DSP, now DVA. Walmart Connect, TikTok Shop and other retail media networks use the same label with different units and windows, and IAB Europe sets measurement standards for it. Google, Meta and Microsoft use their own new customer definitions.

What: A classification of ad-attributed purchases as new to brand when the shopper has not bought the brand on Amazon in the previous 12 months, producing columns such as NTB purchases, NTB sales, NTB ROAS and NTB effective cost per purchase.

When: Introduced in January 2019, extended to Sponsored Display in October 2021, tied to long-term sales in October 2024, used for bid boosting from May 2025 and built into Full-Funnel Campaigns from September 2026; three NTB measures sit in Amazon's benchmarks as updated on November 11, 2026.

Where: In Amazon's advertising console, API and DSP reports, and in Amazon Marketing Cloud for custom lookbacks. It counts only purchases made on Amazon.

Why: ROAS cannot tell whether advertising reaches new buyers or recycles existing ones. NTB offers a proxy for customer acquisition, though it cannot see off-Amazon history and does not measure incrementality.