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The Amazon unBoxed 2025 conference wasn't just a showcase for technological advancement; it reflected the next evolution of retail media measurement. Reiterated across keynote speeches and product announcements, the event’s overarching theme was the “full funnel,” meaning the customer journey from awareness to purchase across all advertising channels. But the underlying, critical metric not widely mentioned is the return to a true business bedrock: lifetime value (LTV).
In the absence of traditional brand loyalty, lifetime value is no longer a given: it’s the ultimate measure of ongoing customer relevance. For too long, our industry has been incentivized to focus on near-term sales, optimizing for metrics that don't reflect long-term brand health. Amazon’s strategy might be laying the groundwork to help brands justify shifting from immediate returns to building strategies around the sustainable metrics that truly drive and maintain growth.
Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): A great ROAS can often be just a vanity metric if not done correctly. You can pour all your budget into campaigns that target existing, loyal customers to drive an artificially high ROAS. While profitable in the moment, this strategy yields little incrementality, although it does ensure a strong defense against tactics like competitive conquesting on your brand terms.
New-to-Brand (NTB): NTB is a significant step forward, correctly identifying the value of acquiring incremental, first-time customers. This is crucial for expanding your market share by prioritizing acquisition over retention.
The winning strategy, and the one Amazon's new ecosystem is designed to reward, is a balanced approach: Keep existing customers happy and returning, while consistently and efficiently generating more NTB.
1. The Full-Funnel Consolidation. The most impactful announcement was the unification of the Amazon Ads console and Amazon DSP into a single Campaign Manager, which any practitioner will appreciate. Previously, push (Offsite inventory) and pull (Onsite Sponsored Ads) tactics lived in silos. Planning, execution, and reporting were fragmented, resulting in disconnected measurement of the consumer journey. Now, Campaign Manager provides a unified stage for your entire customer journey. This simplification is the first step toward running truly holistic campaigns that can be optimized to drive value over time, not just immediate clicks. The "full funnel" is now a single workflow, and Amazon’s Creative Agent is another connector of media and content.
2. Amazon Marketing Cloud Powers Commerce Insights. The focus on using AI to alleviate time-consuming in AMC speaks clearly to Amazon’s recognition of user feedback. Isolated data points (ad impressions, search terms, purchases, viewership) from AMC can be stitched together to reveal the true customer journey and, crucially, the long-term value generated. This is where brands can finally quantify the true ROI of a full-funnel approach, moving beyond simple click-to-conversion metrics by integrating custom audiences into their media.
Centered on the LTV metric, this unified approach fundamentally changes the conversation from "How much did I make on this ad?" to "How much is this customer worth to my brand over the next five years?"
LTV is not yet the headline KPI for every Amazon advertiser, but I predict it’ll be a headliner at unBoxed 2026. It represents the true, long-term value of a customer relationship that far exceeds the initial transaction. Amazon has just given us the combined stage (Campaign Manager) and the complex sound engineering (AMC) needed to make an LTV-focused strategy possible from planning, to activation, to measurement.
The time has come for brands to stop settling for the safe, limited performance of short-term metrics. By implementing a unified, LTV-focused strategy, you won't just hit your quarterly sales goals. You'll build an enduring, profitable brand that becomes a true, must-see headliner for years to come.
If you’re looking to move from concept to reality, Profitero+ helps brands win on Amazon and beyond by aligning media, content, operations and strategy. With these aligned, you’ll close the gap between traffic and conversion - giving you the insights to understand lifetime customer value and set your brand up to win long-term. Our expanded Amazon Solutions suite brings it all together with enhanced services, audience segmentation and Shelf Intelligent Media (SIM) tech signals.
Plus, if you want to hear more about how to close the gap between traffic and conversion, you can now watch our Lightning Talk from unBoxed on-demand: Finding harmony: How to bridge the gap between traffic and conversion to maximize media ROI featuring Mike Black, Chief Growth Officer at Profitero+ and Laura Hyland, Global VP, Digital and Commercial Strategy at BIC here.
