12:30
Amazon Advertising
Amazon does not expose customer acquisition cost the way a DTC storefront does, but a seller can approximate it by combining Business Reports (units ordered, ordered product sales), Brand Analytics repeat-purchase data, and Advertising reports (ad spend, orders, CPC, conversion rate) into one of several CAC formulas.
On a DTC site (Shopify, WooCommerce) you own all the data end-to-end; Amazon gives you the data but does not make it easy to see what you're spending versus getting.
Start in Business Reports > Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Child Item; pull Units Ordered and Ordered Product Sales for the ASIN, and use Units Ordered rather than Total Order Items, which many sellers mistakenly focus on.
Amazon tracks repeat purchases, which complicates a simple units/sales-based CAC.
Brand Analytics considers a purchase a 'repeat' only if the same customer bought within the prior 90 days; Advertising instead treats anyone who hasn't purchased in the last 365 days as new-to-brand, so the two systems define 'new' differently.
Go to Brands > Brand Analytics > Customer Behavior Analytics > Repeat Purchase Behavior to get Total Orders, Repeat Ordered Product Sales, and Repeat Units (ASIN or brand view).
Pull ad spend and ad orders from the advertising report for the same time frame.
Blended CAC formula: Ad Spend divided by (Total Orders minus Repeat Unit Orders); in the walkthrough example this comes out to about 446.
This blended figure includes organic-found customers too, which relates to TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale), described as a blended/true CAC view.
A paid-only CAC can be approximated from the Sponsored Brands report's new-to-brand line item, but this only covers Sponsored Brands, not Sponsored Products, so it's not perfect math.
Alternative 'advertised CAC' formula: Ad Spend divided by (Total Orders minus Advertised Orders), assuming repeat purchases aren't ad-driven.
A further shortcut: CPC times Total Clicks equals ad spend, and CPC combined with the conversion rate (e.g., a $1.37 CPC against a 14.05% conversion rate, 961 total clicks) gets you to the advertised CAC without pulling separate order counts.
My Amazon Guy has in-house software (not sold publicly, used only for its own clients, especially repeat-purchasable CPG brands) that pulls all these reports and calculates true per-product profit margins and CAC.
Business Reports: Detail Page Sales and Traffic by Child Item — The standard Amazon Seller Central report (Reports > Business Reports) showing per-ASIN Units Ordered and Ordered Product Sales. Apply: Pull Units Ordered and Ordered Product Sales for the target ASIN as the first two raw inputs for the CAC calculation.
Units Ordered vs. Total Order Items — Units Ordered is the actual count of units sold, distinct from Total Order Items, a metric many sellers mistakenly use instead. Apply: Always base CAC math on Units Ordered rather than Total Order Items.
Brand Analytics: Repeat Purchase Behavior report — A Brand Analytics report (Customer Behavior Analytics > Repeat Purchase Behavior, ASIN or brand view) that shows Total Orders, Repeat Ordered Product Sales, and Repeat Units. Apply: Use it to get Total Orders and Repeat Units so you can subtract repeat purchases out of the total when isolating new customers.
90-day vs. 365-day repeat/new-to-brand windows — Brand Analytics/organic reporting counts a purchase as 'repeat' only if the customer bought again within 90 days, while Advertising treats anyone without a purchase in the last 365 days as new-to-brand. Apply: Don't treat 'repeat' and 'new-to-brand' figures from Brand Analytics and Advertising reports as directly interchangeable, since they use different lookback periods.
Blended CAC formula — CAC = Ad Spend ÷ (Total Orders − Repeat Unit Orders), producing a blended organic-plus-paid customer acquisition cost. Apply: Subtract Repeat Units from Total Orders to approximate new customers, then divide total ad spend by that number to get a blended CAC (e.g., ~$4.46 in the example).
TACOS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale) — A pre-existing metric the presenter calls out as conceptually related to the blended CAC calculation. Apply: Reference TACOS alongside blended CAC when framing overall ad spend against total sales performance.
Advertised CAC formula — CAC = Ad Spend ÷ (Total Orders − Advertised Orders), an alternative that assumes repeat purchases aren't ad-driven and isolates an advertising-focused CAC. Apply: Swap Advertised Orders in for Repeat Units in the denominator when you want an ads-only CAC instead of the blended version.
Sponsored Brands new-to-brand line item — A report line, available only for Sponsored Brands (not Sponsored Products) campaigns, showing new-to-brand customer orders from sponsored brand or sponsored display. Apply: Run the Sponsored Brands report and treat its new-to-brand order line as an imperfect, closest-available cross-check on paid CAC, keeping in mind it excludes Sponsored Products spend.
CPC × Conversion Rate shortcut — A method using Cost Per Click, Total Clicks, and Conversion Rate from the advertising report, where CPC × Total Clicks = Ad Spend, which is then related to the conversion percentage to reach the advertised CAC. Apply: Pull CPC, total clicks, and conversion rate from the advertising report and combine them as an alternative route to advertised CAC without separately pulling order counts.
Because Brand Analytics uses a 90-day repeat window while Advertising uses a 365-day new-to-brand window, a customer counted as 'new' in one report could already be a 'repeat' in the other, meaning any cross-report CAC calculation is inherently an approximation, not an exact figure — a caveat the video states outright.
The 'advertised CAC' formula doesn't adjust ad spend itself; it just swaps Repeat Units for Advertised Orders in the denominator, built on the assumption that repeat purchases aren't paid-driven — a simplifying assumption rather than a verified fact.
The presenter positions the Sponsored Brands new-to-brand line item as the closest thing to true paid CAC, yet also disqualifies it as sufficient on its own because it excludes Sponsored Products entirely, implying no single Amazon report can produce a fully accurate paid-only CAC.
In the walkthrough's own numbers (300 total orders, only 4 repeat units), the gap between 'blended' and 'advertised' CAC formulas would be numerically small for this ASIN, even though the definitional gap between the two report systems remains regardless of the specific numbers.
«Amazon technically gives you that data, but they don't make it easy for you to understand what you're actually spending and what you're getting out of that at all times.»
— 00:22
«Amazon does actually track repeat purchases from different customers.»
— 02:22
«Amazon only considers something to be a repeat purchase if somebody purchased it prior in the 90-day period from when they next purchase it.»
— 02:44
«advertising considers anybody who hasn't purchased in the last 365 days to be a new-to-brand customer.»
— 03:01
«we can see that our customer acquisition cost for new customers over the last week was essentially about 446.»
— 07:38
«because we can assume repeat purchases probably aren't being paid for, we can do our ad orders, right?»
— 08:49
«that's not going to be a perfect math, but this is about the closest you will get at being able to actually understand.»
— 11:31
Reception
No comments are available to gauge audience reception.
The video delivers a concrete, replicable multi-report method for approximating Amazon CAC and candidly flags where Amazon's own conflicting report definitions (90-day vs. 365-day repeat windows, Sponsored Brands-only new-to-brand data) prevent a perfectly accurate figure. It reads as a practical seller-side tutorial that closes with a pitch for the presenter's in-house CAC/profit-margin software.
12:30