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Attribution — New Customer

Last updated on Jun 12, 2026

Overview

The Attribution — New Customer dashboard isolates marketing performance for first-time buyers only. Where Attribution Analytics shows blended performance across all customers, this view strips out repeat purchases and answers a more specific question: how efficiently is your marketing acquiring new customers?

This is the right view to use when evaluating customer acquisition strategy, setting CAC targets, and understanding which channels are actually growing your customer base vs. re-converting existing ones.

Navigate to: Signal → Marketing Attribution → Attribution - New Customer

Summary KPIs

Eight KPI cards sit at the top of the dashboard, each showing the current period value and a period-over-period change indicator.

Metric What It Measures
Revenue Total revenue attributed to new customer orders
Orders Number of orders placed by first-time buyers
AOV Average order value for new customers
aMER Acquisition MER — New Customer Revenue ÷ Total Ad Spend. Measures the cost efficiency of acquiring new customers across all marketing investment.
Total Ad Spend Total spend across all connected paid channels for the period
Customers Number of unique new customers acquired
CPA Ad Spend ÷ New Customer Orders — your cost to acquire one new customer order
ROAS New Customer Revenue ÷ Ad Spend

The relationship between these metrics

These eight metrics tell a connected story. Read them together rather than in isolation:

  • Revenue and Orders trending up while CPA is flat or declining — you're scaling acquisition efficiently

  • Revenue up but Customers flat — AOV is rising, not volume. Good for revenue, but may mask slowing new customer growth

  • ROAS declining while aMER holds — your paid channels are becoming less efficient but overall acquisition economics are holding. Investigate which paid channels are dragging ROAS down.

  • aMER declining — your total ad investment is becoming less efficient at generating new customer revenue. This is a leading indicator of a CAC problem before it shows up in absolute numbers.

Key KPIs Trend Chart

The Key KPIs Trend chart plots ROAS, CPA, MER, and AOV over time on a dual-axis chart (left axis: value in number; right axis: value in dollars).

How to read it:

  • ROAS and MER move on the left axis — rising lines mean improving efficiency

  • CPA and AOV move on the right axis (dollar values) — a rising CPA line means acquisition is getting more expensive

  • Watch for divergence: if ROAS is declining while CPA is rising, your new customer acquisition is under pressure from both sides

Use the chart to identify when a metric changed, then correlate it with campaign changes, budget shifts, or external factors (seasonality, competitor activity) in that period.

Revenue & Ad Spend Trend Chart

The Revenue & Ad Spend Trend chart plots three series over time:

  • Ad Spend — total paid media investment (left axis)

  • New Customer Revenue — revenue from first-time buyers (left axis)

  • New Customer count — number of new customers acquired (right axis)

How to read it:

  • The gap between New Customer Revenue and Ad Spend is your new customer profit contribution before other costs. A widening gap is healthy; a narrowing gap means acquisition economics are tightening.

  • Watch New Customer count independently from Revenue — if count is flat but revenue is rising, you're getting higher-value first-time buyers. If count is rising but revenue is flat, new customers are buying lower-value items.

Both charts support export via the menu icon (top right of each chart): PNG, JPEG, PDF, SVG, CSV, and XLS.

The MOAT Table — New Customer View

The MOAT table on this page shows the same structure as Attribution Analytics but scoped exclusively to new customer orders. It has three tabs: Media Source, Campaign, and Ads.

The Attribution filter applies the same model options as the main dashboard: Any Click, First Click, Last Click, Equal Weight, View-Through.

How to use this table differently from the main Attribution view

The main Attribution MOAT table includes all orders — new and returning. This one shows only new customers. The difference matters:

Channels that look efficient on blended attribution but weak here are primarily driving repeat purchases, not acquisition. This is common for Email and SMS — high blended ROAS, but most of those orders are from existing customers responding to retention campaigns. Filtering to New Customer gives you their true acquisition contribution.

Channels that look weak on blended attribution but strong here are acquisition engines that get buried when repeat purchase revenue from other channels inflates the total. This is sometimes the case for TOF Meta or Google Discovery campaigns.

Specific decisions this view drives

1. Evaluating new customer CPA against your CAC target Set your target CAC before opening this dashboard. Compare each channel's CPA in the New Customer MOAT against that target. Channels above your CAC threshold are unprofitable for acquisition — even if their blended ROAS looks acceptable.

2. Finding your most efficient new customer acquisition channel Sort the Media Source tab by ROAS descending. The top channel by new customer ROAS is where additional acquisition budget will likely generate the best return. Cross-reference with the period-over-period trend — a high ROAS channel that's declining week-over-week may be saturating.

3. Identifying campaigns that aren't acquiring anyone Switch to the Campaign tab. Look for high-spend campaigns with low new customer orders. If a campaign is spending significantly but attributing few new customer conversions, it's a retention campaign being funded from your acquisition budget — or it's simply not working for acquisition.

4. Auditing creative performance for new customers Switch to the Ads tab. Compare CPA across individual ads within the same campaign. Large CPA variance between ads in the same campaign means creative is a significant lever — the best-performing ad is worth isolating and scaling, and the worst-performing ad is worth pausing.

Comparing New Customer vs. Returning Customer Performance

The most useful analysis you can run with this dashboard is a direct comparison between the New Customer and Returning Customer views.

Open both in separate tabs and compare the same channel's performance across both views. Ask:

  • Which channels have high Revenue % in Returning but low Revenue % in New? Those are retention channels — evaluate them on retention metrics, not acquisition metrics.

  • Which channels are roughly balanced between New and Returning? These channels are working across the full funnel.

  • Which channels are almost exclusively New Customer? These are your acquisition engines — protect their budget when under pressure.

This comparison also helps you have more honest conversations with your media agency. If they're reporting strong blended ROAS on a channel that's almost entirely returning customer revenue, the acquisition case for that channel is weaker than the headline numbers suggest.

Common Questions

Why are my New Customer Orders lower than I'd expect? LayerFive identifies new customers based on purchase history in your connected e-commerce data. If a customer's first purchase was before your Shopify integration was connected, LayerFive may classify a returning customer as new. This gap typically closes over time as more purchase history is captured.

My New Customer ROAS is much lower than blended ROAS — is that a problem? Not necessarily — it's expected. New customers cost more to acquire than returning customers cost to retain. The question is whether your New Customer ROAS is above the threshold needed to recover CAC within your target payback period. Use Cohort Analysis to understand how quickly new customers from each channel go on to make repeat purchases.

aMER is declining but ROAS looks fine — which should I trust? Both are telling you something different. ROAS reflects the efficiency of attributed paid spend only. aMER uses your total ad spend as the denominator, including spend that may not have directly attributed orders (brand awareness campaigns, impression-only spend). A declining aMER with stable ROAS means your unattributed spend is growing — worth investigating whether that spend is delivering value.

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