How to Leverage Amazon’s New-to-Brand Metrics for Your Ad Strategy
New data enables Amazon advertisers to determine effectiveness of ad campaigns in attracting new customers versus retaining existing customers.By Natalie TaylorJuly 12, 2019
Stay on top of the latest e-commerce and marketplace trends.
Do you know how effective your Amazon Advertising campaigns are in driving customer acquisition versus customer retention?
Historically, sellers and brands on Amazon completely lacked visibility into whether an ad-attributed purchase was made by a net new or existing customer. However, as Amazon continues to beef up its advertising platform to compete with Facebook and Google, the company is now offering a number of customer loyalty metrics that you can leverage to optimize your paid marketing strategy.
In November 2018, Amazon quietly rolled out a set of four metrics called “new-to-brand” (NTB) to help advertisers identify strategies that can drive customer acquisition and efficient business growth on the marketplace. With these metrics, sellers and brands on Amazon for the first time have visibility into customer loyalty and acquisition data.
Since the initial launch, Amazon has introduced three additional NTB metrics to its measurement suite — which now includes more than 100 campaign reporting metrics — yet many sellers remain unaware of the new metrics’ existence. To help you understand and take advantage of this data, we have outlined each metric and their uses so you can optimize your advertising campaigns and gauge the effectiveness of your ads in attracting new customers.
How New-to-Brand Metrics Work
NTB metrics distinguish whether an ad-attributed purchase was made by a repeat customer or a “new” customer, which Amazon defines as “one buying a brand’s product on Amazon for the first time over the prior year.” To determine whether an order is new-to-brand, Amazon reviews the last 12 months of a customer’s purchase history; if he or she has not purchased from your brand within that time frame, the order is considered new-to-brand.
Available to brand-registered sellers through Seller Central, vendors through Amazon Marketing Services, and Amazon DSP users, the NTB metrics allow you to measure orders and sales of your products generated from first-time customers of your brand on Amazon so you can better measure and optimize in-flight campaigns and plan future marketing strategies to drive customer acquisition and brand loyalty.
However, you should note that this data is only available for Sponsored Brands ads beginning Nov. 1, 2018. When analyzing your metrics, if you select a start date earlier than Nov. 1, the data will automatically be calculated from Nov. 1 onward. These metrics are not currently available for Sponsored Products ads.
Despite this caveat, NTB metrics can be extremely useful in determining the most efficient channels and tactics for achieving your campaign goals. The metrics feature campaign performance data, like new-to-brand purchases and sales or cost per new-to-brand customer, and provide advertisers with the tools they need to estimate the cost of acquiring new customers on Amazon.
The seven NTB metrics available for Sponsored Brands campaigns and keywords include:
New-to-brand orders: The number of first-time orders for products within the brand over a one-year look-back window
New-to-brand sales:The total sales of new-to-brand orders
% of orders new-to-brand:The percentage of total orders that are new-to-brand orders
% of sales new-to-brand:The total sales of new-to-brand purchases
New-to-brand units:The number of units from first-time orders for products within the brand over a one-year look-back window
% of units new-to-brand:The percentage of total units that are units from new-to-brand orders
New-to-brand order rate:The number of new-to-brand orders relative to the number of clicks (New-to-brand order rate = New-to-brand orders / clicks)
All seven metrics can be located in the Sponsored Brands downloadable reports. The new-to-brand orders, new-to-brand sales, percent of orders new-to-brand, and percent of sales new-to-brand metrics can also be added to the performance dashboard and data table in campaign manager.
What This Means for Your Ad Strategy
The addition of NTB metrics signals Amazon’s rising focus around brand awareness rather than strictly point of sale. With the majority of consumers beginning their search for new products on Amazon, according to Feedvisor data, the e-commerce leader has certainly established itself as not only a sales channel but also a search engine for retail. The addition of NTB metrics further positions Amazon as an acquisition channel and brand awareness driver, making its ad platform all the more effective and attractive for advertisers.
Previously, advertisers were only able to track how many sales generated from their ads within a 14-day attribution window. Now you can look beyond the short-term return on ad spend (RoAS) to determine the extent to which Amazon can incrementally grow your business.
One way to leverage these metrics is by creating a Sponsored Brands campaign with the goal of attracting new customers by targeting high search volume keywords. After the campaign has been running for at least 14 days, you should review its new-to-brand keyword metrics and filter them by acceptable RoAS and advertising cost of sale (ACoS). Those with the highest percent of orders new-to-brand are your targeting candidates for driving new-to-brand orders.
You should also review the new-to-brand units and sales metrics to identify keywords that generate new-to-brand orders with higher price points and basket sizes. In this case, be sure to monitor the campaign’s new-to-brand performance over time using the performance dashboard and adjust your level of investment accordingly.
About the Author
Natalie Taylor is the content manager at Feedvisor, where she oversees and executes on the company's content marketing strategy. Prior to her work at Feedvisor, she wrote for a B2B supermarket magazine, focusing on merchandising and marketing trends in the grocery industry.
Final Thoughts
While Amazon still trails behind the advertising duopoly of Google and Facebook, the addition of NTB metrics drastically broadens the appeal of its ad platform for performance-based advertisers. You can now run campaigns with the goal of increasing brand awareness or generating new customers as well as understand which keyword categories are best fit for new customer acquisition versus recurring customers.
By leveraging these metrics in conjunction with Feedvisor’s advertising optimization platform, you can increase brand awareness and discoverability, drive customer loyalty, effectively adjust your ad campaigns for specific target audiences, and ultimately drive incremental growth to your business.
Learn what Feedvisor can do for your business.
When you partner with Feedvisor, you automatically receive access to our true, AI-driven technology and hands-on team of e-commerce experts. Contact one of our team members today to learn more about our end-to-end solution for brands and large sellers on Amazon, Walmart, and e-marketplaces.
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