The Amazon marketplace is incredibly competitive, particularly in the US, where the platform accounts for more than 40% of retail ecommerce sales. 

With so many products competing for attention, many sellers and brands turn to Amazon advertising to improve visibility and drive sales. 

But if you thought setting up on Amazon was difficult, wait till you start running ads. 

Amazon advertising now includes Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, Brand Stores, video ads, audio ads, and display ads. Then, there’s Amazon DSP (demand-side platform), which is a whole other thing. 

To do it all right, you need a partner who understands Amazon’s advertising tools, marketplace dynamics, customer behavior, and the factors that influence conversions 

An experienced Amazon advertising agency can help you run successful campaigns backed by strategy and strong marketplace experience. 

Most agencies featured in this list specialize in Amazon. We have also included broader retail media agencies with proven experience helping brands improve their visibility, advertising performance, and sales on the platform. 

Amazon Advertising Agencies in the US, Compared 

Top 10 Amazon Advertising Agencies in the US that Specialize in Marketplace Growth 

To help you narrow down your options, we have shared a list of agencies selected for their Amazon advertising services, marketplace experience, core strengths, and ability to support different types of brands. 

1. Incrementum Digital

• Location: New York, NY 
• Notable clients: Samsonite, Ruggable, Martha Stewart, and Super Mario Galaxy
• Rating: 4.8/5 (Trustpilot)

Incrementum Digital is an Amazon-focused ecommerce growth agency that helps you scale across Amazon through targeted display, audio, and video ads. The agency also offers Amazon DSP Management, Seller Operations Management, and covers other retail media channels. 

The agency is well-suited for brands that need more than basic PPC management, as it integrates Amazon PPC, Amazon DSP, product listing optimization, campaign management, creative optimization, and data analytics into a more complete marketplace growth system.

One of Incrementum Digital’s stronger differentiators is DataOwl, its in-house analytics platform. According to the agency, DataOwl unifies insights from Amazon sales, advertising, DSP, and Amazon Marketing Cloud into a single dashboard. You can get visibility into PPC analytics, sales performance, customer journey mapping, and Amazon DSP funnel performance. 

2. Amazon Growth Lab

• Location: Culver City, CA
• Notable clients: Ray-Ban, Mavi Jeans, Ernst Grain, Thrival Muscle Recovery, Vista Fitness, Brooklinen, and Oakley.
• Rating: 4.9/5 (Clutch)

Amazon Growth Lab is a full-service Amazon marketing agency, with services like Amazon PPC, Amazon SEO, listing optimization, creatives, and full-fledged Amazon account management. 

The agency combines paid advertising with organic marketplace strategies to improve product visibility, rankings, and sales performance. For instance, they helped Ernst Grain hit the $10 million mark with a remarkable 2.5% TaCoS. 

Its approach extends beyond campaign management. The team also works on product listings, keywords, images, ad copy, and other content elements that influence organic visibility and conversion rates. Its client portfolio spans competitive categories such as wellness, fitness, home, fashion, and food. 

As their minimum project size is $10K+, they’re best suited for sellers who already have some traction on the marketplace and are looking to scale further. 

3. Blue Wheel

• Location: Birmingham, Michigan
• Notable clients: PowerBlock, Ariat, Cremo, Sol de Janeiro, and Jack Black
• Rating: 4.8/5 (Featured Customers)

Blue Wheel is a full-service ecommerce and marketplace agency that combines Amazon Advertising, Amazon DSP, retail media, marketplace management, and performance creative.

Its Amazon marketing team runs advanced Amazon Ads and Amazon DSP strategies backed by 15 years of industry experience. Services include Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, Amazon DSP, A+ Content & Storefronts, and Amazon SEO. 

The agency has already worked with over 250 clients and reports an average ACoS of 11.8%, though performance varies depending on the industry and advertising budget. Its case studies also show measurable sales outcomes. For example, an air freshener brand recorded 18.09% growth in total sales. 

Blue Wheel is a strong choice if you want Amazon advertising and DSP connected to the broader commerce strategy rather than handled as a standalone PPC management effort. 

4. Envision Horizons

• Location: New York, NY 
• Notable clients: Kopari Beauty, Dose, Borghese, Nisolo, Odacité, AIIR Professional, and Drift.
• Rating: 4.9/5 (Clutch)

Envision Horizons offers Amazon advertising specialties with over a decade of experience. It is best for established brands that want Amazon to operate as a strategic growth channel. Besides ads, the agency works across Amazon growth, Amazon DSP, Amazon Marketing Cloud, retail media marketplaces, and affiliates. 

Envision Horizons supports full-funnel growth systems that combine advertising strategy, advanced analytics, and operational execution. Plus, it has extensive experience in categories such as beauty & wellness, home & kitchen, baby, and pet supplies. 

myHorizons, the agency’s proprietary analytics platform, connects retail readiness, ad performance, operations, profitability data, competitive intelligence, and real-time performance insights. This kind of reporting helps you move beyond basic dashboards and toward data-driven optimization. Notably, Envision Horizons is an Amazon Advanced Ads Partner. 

5. 9AM

• Location: New York, NY
• Notable clients: Hurom, EVRY Jewels, Mogu Mogu, Booksy, NielsenIQ, Unroll.me, and GenomeLink.
• Clients: 4.9/5 (G2)

9AM is a performance media agency that connects Amazon advertising with broader paid media, creative strategy, analytics, and growth strategy. Its Amazon advertising services include Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, keyword targeting, product and category targeting, remarketing, and Brand Store integration. 

The agency is best for brands that want Amazon Ads managed as part of a wider performance ecosystem. Plus, its measurement specialty brings data-driven insights on Amazon marketplace performance, which can help address category-specific challenges and maximize ROAS. 

With $250M in ad spend and experience in marketing for 120+ companies, the agency has the scale and technical expertise to work with six- and seven-figure brands selling on Amazon. 

9AM also brings creator marketing and creative design into the mix. For instance, the agency can produce user-generated content (UGC) to optimize storefront and product listings. 

5. Olifant Digital

• Location: Grand Island, NY.
• Notable clients: WedgeGuys, COCOSOLIS, Ekster, OneRoot, HakaLife, Better & Better, and Parker Baby Co.
• Rating: 5/5 (Clutch)

Olifant Digital is a full-service Amazon and ecommerce growth agency for brands that want hands-on Amazon account management. The agency says it manages more than $100M in annual revenue for ecommerce brands and sellers. 

There’s a 60-day money-back guarantee, which suggests they can deliver results quickly. Besides Amazon PPC, they also offer listing optimization, account audits, and SEO, and can even support new product launches. 

So, they’re good for new entrants to the marketplace as well as active sellers who may be struggling to get sales. Olifant says their team consists of Amazon specialists and that clients actually get senior account support. And these seniors have more than 7 years of experience. Case studies confirm that experience, as brands like Bullstrap saw actual growth (85% revenue increase) when working with Olifant’s experts. 

6. Thrive Internet Marketing

• Location: Arlington, Dallas, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Seattle, Atlanta, and Miami.
• Notable clients: Grow Strong Industries, Brazos Higher Education
• Rating: 4.6/5 (Clutch)

Thrive Internet Marketing Agency is a full-service digital marketing agency with a dedicated Amazon marketing offering. Its Amazon services are perfect if you need help understanding and growing on Amazon’s ecommerce marketplace, with support across ads, store optimization, Amazon SEO, seller consulting, and Amazon DSP advertising management. 

Thrive also brings broader digital strategy capabilities into the mix, including SEO, PPC advertising, social media, content writing, CRO, web design, and ecommerce optimization. This can be great for brands that want to connect Amazon to other customer acquisition channels. 

For Amazon sellers, Thrive is best suited to companies that want practical campaign management and marketplace support rather than a narrow ad-tech platform. For example, Thrive helped a Wisconsin-based ginseng grower reduce ACoS by 55% while increasing advertising sales by 35%. 

7. Nuanced Media

• Location: Tucson, AZ
• Notable clients: Dollar Shave Club, True Citrus, Lux Unfiltered, Wald Imports, GillyGro, Fairybell, and Lore Mighty Mushrooms.
• Rating: 4.9/5 (Clutch)

Nuanced Media is an Amazon and ecommerce marketing agency that focuses on profitable marketplace growth through Amazon PPC, Amazon SEO, Amazon DSP, account management, creative services, and catalog operations. 

The agency Amazon-focused partner for established sellers and growing brands since 2010. Its approach starts with customer and competitive intelligence, then uses that market analysis to guide PPC Campaigns, product listing optimization, keyword optimization, ad copy, visuals, and broader growth strategy.

As the agency’s services are research- and data-driven, it may be a good fit for sellers who have already tried advertising and not seen much of a difference. Their customer/competitor research and funnel optimization activities might just nudge the sales in the right direction. 

8. Disruptive Advertising 

• Location: Pleasant Grove, UT
• Notable clients: Bunny James Boxes, NURSECON, Crossover Symmetry, Core Home Fitness, and Enso Rings
• Rating: 4.8/5 (Clutch)

Disruptive Advertising is a performance marketing agency that offers a wide range of paid media services. While not a specialist, it also includes Amazon services, which offer a free audit to potential clients. 

They’ve helped brands increase ROI through Amazon PPC and capitalize on sales events like Prime Day. For instance, EMP Shield saw a 565% increase in revenue through Prime Day sales. 

There’s a clear focus on revenue and growth, which stems from their extensive experience with other marketing channels that are typically even more challenging than Amazon. 

Plus, their educational content on the marketplace shows a practical understanding of both Amazon PPC and the wider Amazon platform.

Disruptive is a good option if you want Amazon advertising to fit within a broader paid media and digital strategy framework. According to the agency itself, companies that use its Amazon services also tap its expertise in areas like SEO, paid search, and paid social. 

9. Amazing Marketing Co.

• Location: Kirkland, WA
• Notable clients: CoRevival, MuteSync, Aki Organic, and Total Nutra.
• Rating: 4.4/5 (Trustpilot)

Amazing Marketing Co. is an Amazon growth-specialist agency focused primarily on supplements, CPG, health, and wellness brands. The agency calls itself a full-stack Amazon growth partner helping brands launch, optimize, and scale on Amazon

Services include Amazon PPC optimization, all types of Sponsored Ads, Prime Day deals, limited-time discounts, virtual bundles, coupons, BFCM deals, keyword research, competitor research, A/B testing, account health, FBA optimization, and inventory coordination.

Basically, it’s a one-stop solution for sellers in their specialized niches. Also, they offer different plans, including one that’s PPC-focused, one that’s overall growth-focused, and two that are more comprehensive. 

Client testimonials point to measurable Amazon PPC outcomes, including one PPC takeover where the agency reported 5x monthly sales, 2x ROAS, and ACoS maintained around 20%.

How to Choose the Right Amazon Advertising Agency for the US Marketplace

When searching for an Amazon ads agency in the US, make sure the company has real experience driving profitability, is active in the US marketplace, understands the competitive market in your category, and can support a full-funnel marketing strategy for your store. 

And it would be a plus if the agency could connect growth on Amazon to other channels where your brand sells, such as retail media, DTC, or social commerce. That way, your investment can drive a consolidated effort across multiple channels, not just Amazon. 

Let’s dive deeper into what to look for beyond specialty and case studies. 

Ability to Scale Profitability on Amazon

The right Amazon advertising agency should know how to grow sales without letting ad spend outpace profit. 

This means they should look beyond surface-level brand awareness metrics like clicks, impressions, or even ACoS (advertising cost of sales). 

They should focus and report on:

• TACoS: Total advertising cost as a percentage of total Amazon sales
• Conversion rate: The percentage of product page visitors who complete a purchase
• Organic ranking growth: Changes in unpaid keyword visibility and organic sales
• Contribution margin: Profit remaining after product costs, Amazon fees, fulfillment expenses, and advertising spend
• ASIN-level profitability: The products generating profitable growth and those absorbing budget without sufficient returns
• Incremental marketplace growth: The extent to which advertising contributes to additional sales rather than capturing demand that already existed

We suggest looking for these specific metrics in client examples and case studies. (You can always request these numbers if they aren’t public). 

Pro tip: Go with an agency that can explain how it manages budget allocation, bid adjustments, keyword harvesting, campaign segmentation, and ASIN-level optimization. 

Understanding of US Category Competition

Competition on Amazon in the US varies widely by category. Supplements may involve stricter compliance, high review expectations, and expensive keywords, while apparel brands face challenges around sizing, returns, seasonality, and creative quality.

Your agency should understand the factors shaping your category in the US, including pricing, review volume, Prime delivery expectations, keyword demand, promotional activity, and the advertising strategies used by leading competitors.

Look for category-specific research in the agency’s proposal. It should explain your competitive position, priority keywords, pricing gaps, review strength, and likely advertising pressure. Amazon Ads now provides US advertisers with category benchmarks, which can help agencies compare campaign performance with relevant peer brands.

Don’t Forget Major US Amazon Sales Events

Amazon advertising performance can change significantly around major US shopping events. 

Prime Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, back-to-school, holiday shopping, and other seasonal retail moments can all affect ad budget, conversion rates, CPCs, inventory management, and campaign performance. 

They’re also great opportunities you simply don’t want to miss. Prime Day, for instance, generated $26.4 billion in sales in 2026, up 9.5% from last year, according to Smartscout. 

The right agency should know how to plan for, during, and after these events, rather than reacting at the last minute.

This planning may include building awareness with Sponsored Brands or Amazon DSP before the event, increasing Sponsored Products coverage during peak demand, protecting branded terms, adjusting budgets, and using Sponsored Display for retargeting after shoppers leave product pages. 

Strong Amazon Ads Management Services should also include post-event reporting, so you can understand how these events play out in terms of sales and revenue. That way, you can plan your inventory better for next season. 

Pro tip: We highly recommend partnering with an agency that offers deep reporting and performance analytics as part of its service. The data will help you (and the agency itself) continuously improve advertising outcomes. 

Look for Full-Funnel Amazon Ads Strategy

Many brands make the mistake of treating Amazon PPC as only a bottom-funnel sales channel. While Sponsored Products are essential for conversion, a stronger Amazon marketing strategy connects multiple ad types across the customer journey. 

This can include Sponsored Brands for brand visibility, Sponsored Display for retargeting, Amazon DSP for audience segmentation, and Brand Stores to support creative storytelling and product discovery.

A full-funnel strategy helps you balance immediate sales with long-term brand recognition and market share growth. 

Your agency should explain how it connects campaign types, keyword strategy, audience targeting, creative testing, and ongoing optimization. Creative support also matters because product images, videos, and ad assets can directly influence conversion rates. 

Amazon’s own creative tools aren’t the best, which is why partnering with a creative agency can be useful. 

Ability to Connect Amazon with Broader Growth in the US Market

If your brand also sells directly to consumers or through other retailers, you need an agency partner that can work with you for those streams as well. 

This is where full-service or retail marketing specialists may be more useful because they’re not limited to Amazon advertising or marketplace management. 

If you need help with your brand’s digital ecosystem, choose an agency that also handles search, social media, influencer content, and DTC (direct to consumer) messaging. This way, you can connect Amazon to other channels for a more cohesive approach to growth marketing. 

How Much Do Amazon Advertising Agencies Charge in the US?

Amazon advertising agency pricing in the US typically consists of two parts: the Amazon Ads budget and the agency’s management fee. This fee can be around $1,500 to $5,000 per month for smaller or mid-sized accounts, while more advanced or full-service Amazon marketing services can range from $3,000 to $10,000+ per month. 

Amazon agency costs typically depend on catalog size, campaign complexity, and whether the agency also manages your Amazon store.

For Amazon PPC management, many agencies charge a flat monthly retainer, a percentage of ad spend, or a hybrid model. 

For brands with larger ad budgets, some Amazon ads agencies charge a percentage of managed media spend. This usually falls around 10% to 20% of monthly ad spend, although established brands may see rates closer to 8% to 15%.

The best way to evaluate pricing is to ask what is included in the fee. A lower-cost agency may only adjust bids and budgets, while a stronger Amazon advertising partner would provide PPC campaign structuring, keyword optimization, automated keyword expansion, creative testing, and performance analytics.

At 9AM, you get all of these services as part of Amazon advertising. 

Besides full-funnel, highly targeted ad campaigns, the agency’s creative and measurement services can help realize growth, even in super competitive categories like beauty, personal care, and electronics. 

Schedule a free Amazon advertising strategy session to identify campaign gaps, creative opportunities, and practical ways to improve marketplace performance. 

FAQs

What services do Amazon advertising agencies provide?

Amazon advertising agencies provide campaign strategy, keyword research, ad creation, bid management, audience targeting, budget optimization, performance reporting, and account management. Many agencies also optimize product listings, improve conversion rates, manage Amazon DSP campaigns, and analyze sales data to increase return on ad spend (ROAS).

How much does Amazon advertising cost in the US?

Amazon advertising costs in the US vary by campaign type, competition, and keywords. Sponsored Products campaigns commonly use cost-per-click (CPC) pricing, with an average CPC of around $1.22, according to Ad Badger. 

How many types of ads are there on Amazon?

Amazon offers four primary advertising types: Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, Sponsored Display, and Amazon DSP. Sponsored Products promote individual listings, Sponsored Brands increase brand visibility, Sponsored Display reaches audiences on and off Amazon, and Amazon DSP delivers programmatic display and video advertising across Amazon-owned and third-party websites.

How can an Amazon advertising agency help me increase sales in the US?

An Amazon advertising agency can increase US sales by adapting campaigns to Amazon.com search behavior, category competition, Prime delivery expectations, and major shopping periods such as Prime Day and Black Friday. It can also refine bids, listings, audience targeting, and budgets based on US customer demand. 

From our experience, we've seen that NYC businesses usually search for a Google Ads agency when the budget starts moving faster than the results. They need cleaner management, better lead quality, less wasted spend, and someone who understands how competitive the New York search can get.

According to Clutch, there are 499 Google Ads agencies in New York City. So, choosing one can feel like scrolling through every pizza place in Manhattan while being hungry.

It's tiring, we know...

But the challenge is bigger than volume. NYC brands deal with expensive clicks, dense local competition, and high-intent searches across every industry you can imagine.

To help you out, we collected the top 10 Google Ads agencies you can compare by paid search specialization, local relevance, service depth, industry fit, proof, and decision value.

Let's get started!

Compare NYC’s Top Google Ads Agencies

A fast table helps you narrow the list before reading full profiles. It also makes it easier to match each agency with your budget, market, and growth stage.

10 Google Ads Agencies in NYC We Think Are Worth Considering

The best fit depends on what you sell and how people buy it. Some teams are stronger for eCommerce, while others make more sense for local service calls, B2B demos, or high-value leads.

These are the agency profiles.

1. 9AM

• Best for: Consumer brands that need Google Ads inside a wider paid media program.
• NYC location: 90 Broad St, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10004
• Why they stand out: 9AM focuses on cross-platform media buying across search, social, CTV, and retail media with unified attribution.

9AM is perfect for brands that already treat paid media as a growth system. Their work connects search coverage with creative testing, shopping-style intent capture, and channel coordination across the broader funnel.

For Hurom, 9AM built a full-funnel paid media architecture and an educational content system for a premium product. The agency reports 4x revenue growth, a 70% CPA drop, 150M+ brand impressions, and a client quote that references 300% ROAS growth.

2. January Digital

• Best for: Established consumer brands in retail, luxury, and beauty that need Google Ads inside a broader media and analytics strategy.
• NYC location: 80 Pine Street, 30th Floor, New York, NY 10005
• Why they stand out: January Digital pairs paid search with brand analytics, incrementality measurement, and media mix modeling so ad spend ties directly to revenue. 

January Digital fits brands that already have marketing infrastructure but want sharper measurement behind it. Their team offers paid search execution and consulting-level strategy, which suits companies that need a partner comfortable presenting results to leadership, not just running campaigns.

They worked with StriVectin to launch their Peptight™ Face Lift Serum through a full-funnel media strategy across Search, YouTube, Meta, CTV, and DOOH. The campaign used audience-specific messaging, educational creative, and high-impact video placements to drive both awareness and sales, leading to nearly 14M unique YouTube reach, +500% growth in branded search interest, 29% lower CPCs, and 53% higher CTRs for influencer-led assets. 

3. Tinuiti

• Best for: Mid-market and enterprise brands that need Google Ads run at scale with sophisticated attribution and measurement behind it.
• NYC location: 111 West 33rd Street, Suite 1510, New York, NY 10001
• Why they stand out: Tinuiti is the largest independent full-funnel performance marketing agency in the US, managing over $4 billion in digital media and pairing paid search execution with its proprietary measurement platform, Bliss Point. 

Tinuiti has built their reputation on granular audience segmentation, advanced Shopping campaign management, and a willingness to publish detailed quarterly benchmark data on Google Ads performance trends. So, if you need a partner fluent in both campaign execution and the broader media-spend conversation, they’re a good pick for you.

For Parts Town, a food-service equipment distributor, Tinuiti used granular audience targeting across Search, Shopping, Display, and YouTube to hit annual growth goals. On a period-over-period basis, the account saw revenue grow 170% while ROAS improved 27% to 1,579%, alongside more than 22,000 app installs generated through Google Ads App Campaigns.

4. Hunter Digital Marketing

• Best for: E-commerce brands that need paid search, retargeting, and Shopping support with a strict ROAS focus.
• NYC location: 137 West 25th Street, 11th floor, New York, NY 10001, US
• Why they stand out: Hunter Digital Marketing focuses on keyword precision, geo targeting, audience targeting, retargeting, attribution monitoring, and commerce outcomes.

Hunter looks like a boutique SEM agency for brands that care about profitable acquisition and revenue efficiency. Its positioning is especially relevant for retail and eCommerce companies that need Google Ads lead generation to connect with shopping behavior and repeat buyers.

For House of Hackney, Hunter Digital handled paid media strategy and planning through search and social advertising. Over the 90-day post-launch period, the campaign delivered a 43.9% conversion rate, $128K in revenue, and 1,382% ROAS.

5. Mediaforce

• Best For: Businesses that want a process-driven PPC partner with local targeting and clear reporting.
• NYC Location: 99 Hudson St., New York, USA 10013
• Why they stand out: Mediaforce covers search, display, shopping, video, remarketing, negative keywords, landing pages, and AI-forward optimization.

Mediaforce is the broadest operational PPC option in this group. It focuses on local New York targeting, structured campaign execution, transparent measurement, and lead acquisition across multiple industries.

Mediaforce’s Blacks Creek case study shows a shift in paid acquisition performance after the agency took over the account. Leads rose to 213, CTR improved to 9.70%, conversion rate increased to 4.92%, CPC fell to $0.37, and cost per conversion dropped to $7.61.

6. Digital Drew SEM

• Best for: Small and mid-sized brands that need an audit-led Google Ads rebuild.
• NYC location: 300 East 75th Street, New York, New York 10021, US
• Why they stand out: Digital Drew SEM focuses on account diagnostics, campaign restructuring, keyword analysis, shopping, remarketing, and hands-on optimization.

Digital Drew SEM fits businesses with ad accounts that need cleanup before scaling. Its positioning is centered on fixing structure, improving targeting, and tightening campaign setup across search, display, shopping, and video.

Digital Drew SEM worked with Hail Group, a roofing company, to improve lead generation through Google Ads. After campaign restructuring, keyword refinements, stronger ad copy, and landing page improvements, Hail Group increased lead volume by over 400% and reduced cost per lead by more than 60%.

7. Jives Media

• Best for: Businesses that want Google Ads connected to CRM data, lead quality, and revenue visibility.
• NYC location: 800 6th Ave Suite 36C, New York, NY 10001, United States
• Why they stand out: Jives Media focuses on conversion tracking, CRM integration, local services ads, remarketing, shopping, YouTube, and Performance Max.

Jives Media frames paid search around funnel performance after the click. Its process appears best suited for companies that need cleaner attribution, better-qualified searches, and closer alignment between ad data and sales outcomes.

This agency worked with the Medical Center of Marin after the business had weak visibility, high CPCs, poor analytics, and a low-negative ROAS. Jives rebuilt tracking, refreshed ads and landing pages, and reported a 97% increase in Google Ads conversions, 5,000 new prospect patients, and 85% year-over-year organic search traffic growth.

8. Socium Media

• Best for: Growth-stage and mid-market companies that need better lead quality and lower CPL.
• NYC location: 5 Crosby Street, New York, NY 10013 USA
• Why they stand out: Socium Media focuses on structured paid search rebuilds through keyword mapping, smart bidding, negative keywords, and landing page testing.

Socium Media has a clear paid search offering with coverage across brand search, non-brand search, competitor search, display ads, YouTube, and demand gen ads. Its fit is strongest where account structure, lead quality, and landing page relevance need to work together.

Socium helped ACV Auctions, a B2B automotive marketplace, restructure its Google Ads account after lead quality issues and pressure from larger competitors. The work led to a 300% increase in total leads, performance 66% below the CPL goal, and an 83% CPL reduction according to the client's quote.

9. VAB Media

• Best for: Local and small-to-mid-sized businesses that need calls, bookings, map visibility, and traffic.
• NYC location: 394 Broadway, 5th Floor, New York City, NY 10013, US
• Why they stand out: VAB Media maps Google Ads campaign types to business goals such as calls, store visits, leads, and lower CPA.

VAB Media takes a practical approach to local demand capture. Its service page connects search ads, local map ads, shopping ads, video ads, display, retargeting, bid optimization, and landing page A/B testing to specific business actions.

This agency worked with Croissant Coworking to align paid search with monthly trial-signup goals. The published result shows a 75% increase in impressions and a 50% decrease in CPA.

10. Directive Consulting

• Best for: B2B and enterprise tech companies that want PPC tied to qualified pipeline.
• NYC location: 750 Lexington Avenue, Floor 9, New York, NY 10022
• Why they stand out: Directive structures paid search around its "Customer Generation" methodology, pairing Google Ads with positioning, messaging, and revenue operations work rather than treating PPC as an isolated channel. 

Directive operates as a leading B2B and enterprise search marketing agency, with New York as one of several offices alongside their dual headquarters in Irvine and Austin. 

The agency leans on financial modeling and first-party attribution to connect ad spend to pipeline rather than surface-level lead counts, which suits companies with longer B2B sales cycles.

For WordPress.com, Directive's paid media work helped strategically nuance enterprise targeting, increasing enterprise opportunities by 607% and closed-won deals by 175%.

Why These Google Ads Agencies in NYC Made The Cut

Choosing a paid search partner in New York takes more than scanning nice websites. So, we looked for agencies that can connect strategy, execution, tracking, and business value without making the process feel like a mystery box.

These are the main criteria we used.

Google Ads Specialization

Strong agencies should clearly work with search, Performance Max, shopping, YouTube, display, remarketing, bidding, quality score, negative keywords, and conversion tracking. They should also understand how to structure Google Ads campaigns around real buyer intent.

According to Google, Performance Max campaigns beyond retail saw 27% more conversions or conversion value at similar CPA/ROAS, according to Google. That makes channel mix and campaign structure even more important for serious customer acquisition.

NYC Market Relevance

New York advertising needs sharper location targeting and borough-level thinking. Search behavior can change from Brooklyn to Queens, and budget can disappear quickly when competition is high. This is where keyword research, competitor monitoring, and ad spend optimization become practical necessities.

Industry Fit

The right agency depends on the business model. For example:

• A dental clinic needs calls and appointment requests.
• A SaaS company needs qualified demos.
• An eCommerce brand needs revenue and ROAS through Google Shopping.
• A law firm needs high-value case leads from Google search ads.

Tracking and Measurement Quality

We believe that strong agencies should understand form tracking, phone call tracking, offline conversion imports, and CRM handoffs. They should also understand landing page testing, attribution, Google Analytics, and reporting.

After all, the average Google Ads cost per lead in 2025 was $70.11, so weak tracking can turn a small gap into a very expensive habit. Good performance tracking also helps connect paid search to the full sales journey.

Proof and Transparency

The strongest agencies show case studies, client examples, review signals, service pages, partner credentials, or clear explanations of how they manage accounts. Bonus points go to teams that explain CRO and conversion-optimized landing pages without turning every sentence into a dashboard screenshot.

Buyer Usefulness

Our team also prioritized agencies that help buyers understand who they are best for, where they are located, what they specialize in, and where they may be a weaker fit. That includes teams with Google Ads experts, clear audit processes, and practical experience with lead generation.

How Much Do Google Ads Agencies In NYC Cost?

Many Google Ads agencies in NYC charge 10-20% of monthly PPC ad spend, while others use fixed retainers, hybrid pricing, or setup fees.

Smaller accounts may start around a few thousand dollars per month for management. Larger accounts can cost much more once strategy, creative, landing pages, and reporting are included.

The bigger question is what the fee covers. Some agencies only manage bids and budgets. Others support content marketing, display ads, brand awareness, and landing page testing as part of a wider omnichannel approach.

So, you should ask how the agency reports Google ad revenue, how they manage cost per click, and how they adapt to Google's algorithms.

Red Flags To Watch For When Comparing PPC Agencies

A bad PPC fit can look fine during the sales call and become expensive after launch. That is why the questions you ask before signing matter as much as the agency’s pitch.

Here are the red flags to watch for.

• The agency promises instant results before reviewing your account, budget, market, or offer.
• It focuses only on clicks instead of leads, appointments, revenue, or pipeline.
• The team cannot explain how it tracks phone calls from ads.
• Search terms are rarely reviewed, so irrelevant queries can keep draining budget.
• Broad match is used heavily without clear negative keywords, bidding rules, or audience controls.
• Reports arrive with numbers only, with no insights, actions, or next steps.
• Landing pages are treated as someone else’s problem, even when conversion rates are weak.
• Account ownership feels unclear, or the agency avoids questions about who controls access.
• Onboarding has no clear process for tracking setup, goals, approvals, assets, or launch timelines.
• The agency cannot explain how it handles healthcare or compliance-sensitive campaigns when those rules apply.

The best Google Ads agencies are transparent about what they can test, what they can control, and what depends on the business’s offer, website, sales process, or patient intake process.

Choose the PPC Partner That Matches How You Grow

The best Google Ads agency for your business depends on what you need paid search to do. Some companies need cleaner tracking and stronger lead quality. Others need better local targeting, tighter eCommerce performance, stronger landing pages, or a clearer way to connect ad spend to revenue.

That is why the smartest move is to compare agencies by fit, process, transparency, and proof. A good partner should explain how they manage campaigns, how they measure results, and where your website, offer, sales process, or intake process may affect performance.

Before you sign, ask direct questions about ownership, reporting, testing, budget use, and onboarding. Then choose the team that gives you the clearest path from clicks to real business outcomes.

FAQs

How long does it take to see results from Google Ads?

Google Ads can start generating traffic within days, but useful performance patterns usually take a few weeks. Most businesses need 30 to 90 days to collect enough data, test search terms, adjust bids, improve landing pages, and understand lead quality.

Who owns the Google Ads account when I work with an agency?

You should own the Google Ads account when you work with an agency. The agency can get access as a manager, but your business should keep control of billing, campaign history, conversion data, and account assets.

How much ad budget should I have before hiring a Google Ads agency?

You should usually have enough budget to create meaningful data each month before hiring an agency. For many NYC businesses, that means a few thousand dollars in monthly media spend, although competitive industries may need more to test properly.

What contract terms should I check before hiring a PPC agency?

We think you should check ownership, cancellation terms, minimum commitment, setup fees, reporting access, and what happens to campaigns after the contract ends. Also, review whether landing pages, tracking assets, creative, and account data belong to your business.

Every week, around 150 million customers shop across Walmart stores and online. This makes Walmart Connect one of the largest retail media platforms in the US. It gives CPG brands the chance to reach shoppers while they're actively deciding what to buy.

Unlike traditional digital advertising, these shoppers are much closer to making a purchase. They are already comparing products, reading reviews, checking prices, and adding items to their carts. 

Many emerging brands assume Walmart Connect works the same way as Google Ads, Meta campaigns, or other paid search platforms. But unfortunately, it doesn't. 

Success on Walmart Connect depends heavily on retail readiness. Strong product listings, competitive pricing, inventory availability, and customer reviews all influence campaign performance alongside your advertising strategy.

This playbook shows you how to approach Walmart Connect with that reality in mind. It's built for emerging CPG brands that want to compete in crowded categories without an enterprise-level budget or a dedicated retail media team. 

What Is Walmart Connect and How Does It Work?

Walmart Connect is Walmart’s retail media platform and one of the largest retail media networks in the U.S., behind Amazon. It gives CPG brands the ability to advertise across Walmart's website, app, physical stores, and now living room screens, all tied to one of the richest first-party data sets in retail. 

This scale matters because Walmart reaches shoppers in places where purchase decisions already happen. Walmart says its stores and clubs are within 10 miles of roughly 90% of the U.S. population. 

Also, Walmart Connect gives advertisers access to Walmart’s first-party data, which comes from real shopping behavior across digital and in-store touchpoints. 

For emerging CPG brands, this changes how you plan media. 

On Google, Meta, or social platforms, you are usually reading intent signals from searches, clicks, views, and engagement. 

However, on Walmart Connect, your campaigns can connect back to Walmart’s own transaction data. This helps you see how ad spend links to purchases across online and in-store sales. 

Core Walmart Connect Ad Formats

Before you set budgets or pick campaign goals, you need to understand what each Walmart Connect ad format is built to do. Some formats capture shoppers who are already searching on Walmart.com. Others help you reach people earlier through display, off-site media, connected TV, and in-store placements.

For emerging CPG brands, the key is simple: match the format to the job. Start with the placements closest to purchase, then expand once your listings, budget, and measurement are ready.

Sponsored Products 

These are pay-per-click ads that appear in search results, category pages, and product detail pages. This is where most emerging CPG brands should start. 

A shopper searching "high-fiber pasta" or "gut health supplement" is already in buying mode. Sponsored products put your SKUs in front of that shopper at the right moment. 

The example below shows how sponsored products appear within Walmart's shopping experience. Instead of interrupting shoppers, these ads appear alongside similar products while customers compare options and decide what to buy. 

Sponsored Brands

Sponsored brands are ads that appear at the top of Walmart search results. They can feature your logo, a custom headline, and up to four products.

This format helps shoppers notice your brand before they click into a competitor’s product page. For emerging CPG brands, that matters in crowded categories where shoppers may recognize the problem before they recognize your brand.`

Walmart Connect reports that 69% of Sponsored Brands orders come from new-to-brand buyers. This makes it a useful format when your goal is to grow your customer base and earn consideration beyond your existing audience.

Sponsored Brands is at the top of search results and features your logo, a custom headline, and up to four products. They serve a mid-to-upper funnel role and build consideration before a shopper clicks into a competitor's page. 

Sponsored Videos 

These are short, keyword-targeted video ads that auto-play directly within Walmart's search results. They run between 5 and 45 seconds, and a click anywhere on the video takes the shopper straight to your product detail page. 

Onsite Display 

This ad format puts banners and visual ads in front of shoppers across Walmart's site and app, outside of search results. Think homepage placements, category browse pages, and product detail pages. You're reaching people who are already on Walmart but haven't searched for your product yet.

Offsite Media 

Offsite Media extends your reach beyond Walmart's site and app entirely. You can place programmatic ads across Connected TV, social platforms like Meta, TikTok, and Pinterest, audio, and gaming, all using Walmart's first-party shopper data for targeting. 

Every impression, regardless of where it runs, ties back to Walmart purchase data so you can measure sales impact.

In-Store Advertising 

In-Store Advertising helps you connect with Walmart customers while they shop across Walmart's 4,600+ U.S. locations. 

These formats reach shoppers from the entrance, through the aisles, and past checkout to build awareness and consideration at the moment purchase decisions are being made. For CPG brands with physical shelf presence, in-store ads can reinforce what your digital advertisements are already doing.

Why Emerging CPG Brands Struggle With Walmart Connect

Many brands assume poor campaign performance means Walmart Connect is too competitive or advertising costs are too high. In our experience, the root cause usually appears much earlier. 

Some of the most common challenges we see are:  

1. Advertising Before The Retail Fundamentals Are Ready

Walmart Connect is an amplifier, and that cuts both ways. If a shopper clicks your ad and the product page has one blurry image, a thin description, and a price that's out of step with the category, they leave. You paid for that click and got nothing from it.

Product attributes also deserve attention. Missing or incomplete attributes limit discoverability and reduce the quality of search matching.

If Walmart cannot confidently understand your product, it becomes harder for the platform to serve your ads to the right audience. 

2. Starting With the Wrong Campaign Types

The instinct for many brands is to run everything at once. Sponsored Products, Sponsored Brands, and Display, all from day one across every SKU in the catalog. Doing this spreads your budget too thin to generate meaningful data on anything. 

Sponsored Brands and Display are consideration formats that work best when shoppers already know your brand. Running them before Sponsored Products has generated any sales data means you're spending money on awareness for a product that hasn't proven it can convert yet. 

3. Bidding on Broad Category Keywords Too Soon

We’ve seen new brands go after the most competitive keywords in their category right out of the gate. 

A brand with little to no sales on the platform will lose those auctions to established players or win them at a cost that makes the ROAS math impossible.

The smarter move early on is to use automatic campaigns. Let Walmart's algorithm surface the search terms your product converts on, then graduate the winners to manual campaigns with tighter control.

4. Using DTC Creative in a Retail Buying Context

A Walmart shopper in search results is not in the same headspace as someone scrolling Instagram or TikTok. DTC campaigns are built for discovery, storytelling, and aspiration. 

Whereas Walmart shoppers behave differently. They want quick answers.

• What is the product?
• How large is it?
• What flavor is it?
• How many units are included?
• Why should I choose this one instead of the alternatives?

Your product spec and value need to be front and center. The brand story can come later, once the shopper is already on your product page.

5. Judging Performance Only by ROAS

ROAS remains one of the most important metrics in retail media. But it shouldn’t be the only metric guiding your decisions in the early stages of a campaign. 

A new brand on Walmart with low sales velocity, thin review counts, and a short purchase history is not going to produce strong ROAS in the first few weeks. This doesn't mean the campaign isn't working. 

Metrics like new-to-brand customers, retail search share of voice, sales velocity, and total Walmart business growth tell a more complete story of how your ads are performing. We’ll cover more on this later in the article.

How to Run Walmart Connect the Right Way

Setting up a Walmart Connect campaign is the easy part. Profit comes from stronger retail fundamentals, a cleaner campaign structure, and a clear test plan. 

Here is the framework we recommend.  

Step 1: Fix Retail Readiness Before Spending

Before you launch, your products need to be ready to convert. 

Walmart’s own guidance recommends a listing quality score of 80% to 100% in Seller Center. Start with your best-selling items. Make sure each listing has a clear product title, accurate attributes, multiple high-quality images, and a description that answers the questions a shopper would ask before purchase. 

You also need to hold the Buy Box on every SKU you plan to advertise. On Walmart, more than one seller can list the same product. The Buy Box is the default "Add to Cart" button shoppers see. 

If another seller holds the Buy Box, your ads may send traffic to a page where that seller gets the order. Walmart’s Repricer tool can help you stay price-competitive and protect that position. 

Step 2: Start With Sponsored Products

For most emerging CPG brands, Sponsored Products should be the first campaign type you launch.

Sponsored Products place your items directly in front of shoppers searching for relevant products across Walmart's site and app. Walmart also recommends automatic campaigns for advertisers who are new to the platform. The algorithm will match your products to relevant search terms based on your listing content and purchase history. 

After 2 to 4 weeks, pull your search term report and identify what's converting. You can then use those terms in manual campaigns where you have full control over bids and match types. 

In fact, according to Walmart, Sponsored Products campaigns using automatic targeting deliver 1.7x higher ROAS than comparable manual-only campaigns. This makes the auto-to-manual transition your absolute best opportunity to scale profitably early on. 

Step 3: Build Budget and Bids by Brand Stage

Your strategy needs to match where you are at Walmart.

Launch stage

At the launch stage, the goal is learning. Here, we suggest keeping budgets concentrated on your priority SKUs and gathering enough data to understand which products, keywords, and audiences generate conversions.

Growth stage

At this stage, increase your investment in campaigns that consistently perform well. Expand winning keywords, raise bids where appropriate, and introduce additional high-potential SKUs.

Scale stage

Once your retail readiness and Sponsored Products performance are stable, you can pursue broader category keywords, additional placements, and full funnel marketing campaigns. 

This is where Display, Video, and Offsite Media start to make sense because your search foundation is strong enough to support them. 

Step 4: Add Sponsored Brands, Display, and Video at the Right Time

Sponsored Brands make sense when you have multiple strong SKUs and a clear brand story to tell at the top of search results. If you only have one converting product and thin brand recognition on Walmart, this format will likely underdeliver.

Display works best for retargeting shoppers who have already visited your product pages. Use it for seasonal pushes where you need broader reach, and for audience expansion once search is performing consistently.

Sponsored Videos help educate shoppers when your product benefits from a visual demonstration. This is useful for innovative products or categories where customers may need additional context before making a purchase. 

Step 5: Create Retail Media Creative That Converts

Walmart shoppers in search results are moving fast and comparing options. As we mentioned earlier, your creative should immediately communicate what the product is and why someone should choose it.

Lead with these in every format:

• Show the product immediately
• Make the category obvious from the first frame
• Lead with the key benefit, not the brand name
• Include pack size, flavor, count, or usage occasion

A shopper looking for a high-fiber snack bar needs to see "20g fiber" before they see your logo.

Step 6: Measure What Matters

These metrics help you understand how advertising contributes to broader business growth across Walmart.

• ROAS and incremental ROAS
• New-to-brand orders
• CPC and CTR
• Conversion rate
• Product velocity
• Organic rank movement
• Total Walmart sales
• Customer retention rate among first-time buyers 

New-to-brand orders are part of Walmart Connect's new-to-brand metrics. They show how many first-time customers your campaigns acquire, giving you a clearer picture of customer acquisition beyond repeat purchases.

How to Scale Walmart Connect Without Burning Budget

Scaling before your foundation is stable is one of the fastest ways to waste budget on Walmart Connect. 

So before increasing spend, we suggest checking these five signals:

• Inventory is stable, and you are not going in and out of stock
• Your product detail pages (PDPs) have strong conversion rates relative to category benchmarks
• Sponsored Products campaigns are generating consistent attributed sales
• You have enough reviews to give new shoppers confidence
• You have clear winning SKUs with proven performance data behind them

If several of these areas still need work, focus on strengthening them before expanding your investment. 

Smart Walmart Connect Scaling Levers

Once your campaigns are producing consistent results, you can begin expanding strategically.

Start by adding new keywords based on search terms that have already demonstrated strong conversion. Increase bids on proven keywords instead of raising bids across every campaign.

Next, introduce additional SKUs that have strong retail readiness and align closely with your existing campaign structure.

If your products are available in physical stores, consider complementing digital campaigns with in-store promotions. Coordinating online and in-store activity can strengthen brand awareness while supporting overall retail performance.

The key is to introduce one or two scaling levers at a time. This approach makes it much easier to measure what is contributing to growth.

Walmart Connect Scaling Mistakes to Avoid

Growing your Walmart Connect program should feel controlled. When you try to scale too quickly, campaign efficiency suffers.

Scaling before inventory is stable

Running ads for a product that keeps going out of stock wastes spend and signals poor reliability to Walmart's algorithm. Stockouts during a scaled campaign can set back your organic ranking significantly.

Adding too many SKUs too quickly

Every new SKU introduces another variable to manage. So, focus on products that already have strong retail readiness and proven demand before expanding your catalog.

Ignoring search term data

Your search term reports contain valuable insights about shopper intent. Brands that review them regularly can identify new keyword opportunities, remove underperforming terms, and refine campaign structure as they grow.

Treating Walmart like Amazon

Although both platforms operate within the retail media space, they have different shoppers and search behavior. A campaign structure that performs well on Amazon Ads may require significant adjustments before it delivers comparable results on Walmart Connect.

Real-Life Successful Examples of Walmart Connect 

One of the best ways to understand Walmart Connect is to see how other retailers have used it to solve their growth challenges. These three sellers show what Walmart Connect looks like in practice across different business types and growth stages.

Sweet Hearts

Sweet Hearts, an apparel brand led by father-son duo David and Hymie Gindi, used Sponsored Search to support a seasonal campaign. The team analyzed which keywords resonated with shoppers and refined their campaigns based on those insights. 

This strategy resulted in a 9% increase in conversion rate. This shows why search data should guide campaign optimization. 

As Hymie Gindi put it:

"It's not about pushing a product that a consumer will find, but pushing a product that a consumer is looking for."

STS Recycling

STS Recycling sells refurbished electronics on Walmart Marketplace. Its catalog changes constantly as new inventory arrives. The main challenge was steady sales throughout the year and enough visibility for newly added products from day one. 

To stay visible, STS Recycling ran always-on automatic Sponsored Products campaigns for its core catalog. For new products, the team used manual campaigns with more aggressive bids to create early momentum. The result was an 87% year-over-year increase in sales and a return on ad spend 6% above their target. 

TRUBAR

TRUBAR combined multiple Walmart Connect solutions to support both online and in-store growth. The brand started with Sponsored Products campaigns to identify the search terms that drove the most sales.

As performance improved, TRUBAR expanded into Sponsored Videos to increase awareness and paired its digital strategy with in-store demos and sampling across 667 Walmart stores.

The results were impressive. Sponsored Products helped sell 17,000 units, Sponsored Videos generated 5 million impressions and drove 60.5% new to brand orders, while the overall campaign produced a 30% month-over-month increase in sales.

How 9AM Can Help You Win With Walmart Connect 

Running Walmart Connect well means managing retail readiness, campaign structure, creative, bidding, and measurement at the same time. Most emerging CPG brands don't have the bandwidth to do all of that internally, and gaps in any one area show up quickly in wasted spend.

If your Walmart Connect campaigns are underperforming or you are preparing to launch for the first time, book a strategy session with 9AM. We will review your retail readiness, identify growth opportunities, and build a roadmap that helps you scale with confidence. 

FAQs

Is Walmart Connect worth it for emerging CPG brands?

Yes, provided your retail fundamentals are already in place. Walmart Connect can accelerate product discovery and sales, but advertising works best when inventory, pricing, PDPs, and reviews are optimized.

What is the best Walmart Connect strategy for a new CPG brand?

Most emerging CPG brands should start with Sponsored Products before they expand into display and video. Search-based placements capture existing demand, create faster learning, and give you a clearer path to sales.

Once your brand has a baseline of performance, broader audience targeting and awareness campaigns can help you reach new shoppers and support further growth.

How much should emerging brands spend on Walmart Connect?

Emerging brands should plan for at least $100 per day on a Sponsored Products test. Walmart recommends this minimum daily budget to maintain visibility during peak shopping hours and build momentum.

This means your first test should usually have about $1,400 to $2,800 available for a two to four week learning period. Use that budget around a small group of priority SKUs, then review search terms, CPCs, conversion rate, and ROAS before you expand.

What metrics matter most in Walmart Connect?

While ROAS is important, it should not be the only success metric. You should also evaluate incremental sales, new-to-brand customers, product velocity, and overall Walmart business growth. The strongest Walmart Connect programs balance short-term efficiency with long-term market share gains.

Should brands prioritize Walmart Connect or Amazon Ads?

The answer depends on where the business has the greatest opportunity for retail growth. Brands with strong Walmart distribution may find that Walmart Connect offers a more efficient path to visibility and sales. In many cases, brands use both platforms as part of a broader retail media strategy, with channel investment aligned to business objectives.

When should brands invest in Walmart Connect display and video advertising?

Display and video typically become more effective once Sponsored Search campaigns are generating consistent results. These upper-funnel formats help you expand reach, build brand awareness, and introduce products to new audiences. However, they generally perform best when supported by strong search coverage and optimized product detail pages.

How important are product detail pages to Walmart Connect performance?

Product detail pages are one of the biggest drivers of advertising efficiency. Even the best campaign strategy can struggle if shoppers encounter weak images, limited product information, or poor reviews. At 9AM, PDP optimization is one of the first areas we evaluate before increasing media investment.

How does 9AM approach Walmart Connect for emerging brands?

At 9AM, we focus on connecting retail readiness, performance media, and measurement into a single growth framework. Rather than optimizing solely for platform metrics, we evaluate how Walmart Connect contributes to broader business outcomes, including sales growth, customer acquisition, and long-term brand development

Appendix

• https://www.walmartconnect.com/about
• https://www.statista.com/topics/12250/walmart-connect/
• https://www.walmartconnect.com/solutions/sponsored-brands
• https://www.walmartconnect.com/solutions/store-ads
• https://www.walmartconnect.com/insights/retail-readiness
• https://www.walmartconnect.com/resources/articles/2025/lets-grow-2025-seller-summit
• https://www.walmartconnect.com/resources/case-studies/2025/new-fashion-styles-won-new-hearts
• https://www.walmartconnect.com/resources/case-studies/2025/roas-strategy-as-sustainable-as-the-year-round-demand-it-set-in-motion
• https://www.walmartconnect.com/resources/case-studies/2025/how-a-brand-raised-the-bar-from-cravings-to-conversion

Choosing a healthcare marketing agency is harder than choosing a normal digital agency because the outcome is closer to patient flow than campaign activity.

A healthcare company is buying qualified patient demand that turns into booked appointments, completed visits, consults, treatment starts, referrals, or service-line revenue. That requires HIPAA-sensitive workflows, healthcare SEO, patient reviews, call tracking, online scheduling, clinical claim control, and appointment attribution.

The stakes are also rising fast. According to eMarketer, U.S. healthcare and pharma digital ad spending reached $24.77 billion in 2025, up 13.3% year over year, while traditional ad spending continued to decline.

So, in this guide, we'll help you compare agencies by patient-acquisition fit, which matters more than generic visibility. Let's start right away!

Side-by-Side Comparison of Healthcare Marketing Agencies

We thought that a quick table would help you separate real patient acquisition capability from polished positioning. It should show which agency fits, what they measure, and where they are weaker.

Here are the agencies to compare:

How We Scored Healthcare Agencies For Patient Growth

Most rankings lean on reputation or service menus. We scored agencies by how well they attract, convert, and measure qualified demand across marketing, scheduling, clinical trust, and reporting.

Our team used a 100-point scoring system to pick these agencies out. So, these are the scoring areas.

Patient Acquisition Proof

Patient acquisition proof carries 25 points because outcomes matter most. We looked for case studies, appointment growth, lower cost per booked appointment, and conversion gains. Our team treated public relations as useful for trust, referrals, or local authority.

Healthcare Specialization

Healthcare specialization carries 15 points because care decisions need stronger trust signals and review paths. We looked for experience across hospitals, clinics, and key specialties. And pharmaceutical companies need agencies that understand market access.

Channel Depth

Channel depth carries 15 points because patient demand comes from several sources. Strong agencies can manage healthcare SEO, paid search, paid social, and CRO. And content marketing gets credit when it follows search intent.

Appointment Conversion and CRO

Appointment conversion and CRO carry 12 points because extra traffic can expose a weak booking path. So, we checked landing pages, appointment forms, online scheduling, mobile speed, and call-to-action clarity. Smart website design matters when it reduces friction for patients.

Compliance and Claim Review

Compliance and claim review carry 12 points because healthcare needs stronger approvals. Our team looked for HIPAA-sensitive tracking, PHI risk control, and clinical claim review. Strong medical communications experience helps healthcare professionals approve claims faster.

Attribution and Reporting

Attribution and reporting carry 10 points because spend should connect to outcomes. Good agencies track calls, forms, booked appointments, and ROI. And strong setups may use CRM, call tracking, EHR, PMS, offline conversion tracking, first-party data, and dashboards. Lastly, predictive analytics helps after clean tracking.

Multi-Location and Service-Line Scalability

Multi-location and service-line scalability carries 6 points because one clinic is easier than 10, 50, or 100 locations. We checked location templates, local SEO at scale, review management, and reporting by market and location.

Pricing Transparency and Client Fit

Pricing transparency and client fit carry 5 points because budget fit changes everything. Our team looked for clear pricing, scope, and contract terms that match provider size and growth stage. The final ranking favors specialization, measurable outcomes, compliance maturity, and clear provider fit.

Best Healthcare Marketing Agencies for Patient Acquisition Growth

The best fit depends on the provider model, market size, and service-line economics. For example, a national hospital system needs a different partner than a single-location clinic that wants more consults next month.

These are the agency profiles to review through an omnichannel approach.

1. 9AM

• Why this agency made the list: 9AM made the list for compliant consumer-health acquisition with strict claim controls.
• Healthcare services: Paid search, paid social, landing pages, CRO, HIPAA analytics
• Best fit: Best for DTC health, wellness, genetic testing, and digital health brands that need lower CAC in sensitive categories.

9AM is closer to a performance media partner than a local-practice lead generation agency. Their work is a good fit for brands that need education, compliant creative, analytics, and growth strategy to move buyers through a careful decision path.

For GenomeLink, 9AM built a multi-format acquisition system across more than five channels and produced 70+ creative assets per month across six formats. Over a partnership of more than three years, the work helped reduce customer acquisition cost by 77%.

2. Ninja Promo

• Why this agency made the list: Ninja Promo made the list for its subscription-based healthcare growth model.
• Healthcare services: Healthcare SEO, paid search, paid social, conversion rate optimization, call tracking.
• Best fit: Best for clinics, multi-location groups, med spas, telehealth companies, and healthcare startups that need channel breadth.

Ninja Promo is all about full-funnel execution and fast operational support. Their healthcare positioning leans toward teams that want one outsourced growth system across acquisition, conversion, reporting, and social media.

The agency managed paid advertising, GA4, and GTM tracking, strategy, and patient outreach for stem cell therapy services for Stemwell. The campaign increased monthly site traffic from 8,000 to 12,000 visits, tripled engagement, generated 750+ new patient inquiries in three months, and improved monthly ROI from $3,000 to $4,500.

3. Healthcare Success

• Why this agency made the list: Healthcare Success made the list for multi-location growth, local visibility, and HIPAA-compliant call tracking.
• Healthcare services: Local SEO, paid search for healthcare, call tracking, HIPAA-aware analytics.
• Best fit: Best for hospitals, health systems, PE-backed provider groups, and multi-location healthcare organizations.

Healthcare Success is one of the more enterprise-oriented agencies in this group. Their emphasis is on centralized strategy, location-level execution, scalable reporting, and stronger governance across larger provider networks. 

For Acuity Optical, Healthcare Success used SEO, paid campaigns, and HIPAA-compliant solutions to compete with national retailers in Southern California. The work produced a 20% increase in appointments at key locations within three months, 159 new patients, 794 unique leads in one month, and a 14:1 paid search ROI.

4. Intrepy

• Why this agency made the list: Intrepy connects private-practice leads to EHR data and appointment-level reporting.
• Healthcare services: Medical SEO, paid search, physician listings management, appointment attribution, CRM reporting.
• Best fit: Best for specialty practices, orthopedic groups, surgical groups, MSOs, and PE-backed physician platforms.

Intrepy is the most practice-centered agency in this list. If you’re a provider group that needs visibility at the practice, location, service line, or physician level, they’re a good pick.

This agency improved urgent-care visibility for Tennessee Orthopaedic Clinics using SEO, content, ads, listings, and analytics. The campaign drove a 94% increase in organic search traffic, 794 urgent care phone calls from ads, and 202 urgent care patients at an average cost of $6.80 per visit.

5. Create Health

• Why this agency made the list: Create Health made the list for code-compliant pharma and medtech campaigns where communication, positioning, and approval control shape growth.
• Healthcare services: Service-line content, campaign strategy, brand launch support, landing page design, and content creation.
• Best fit: Best for pharma and medtech teams that need HCP engagement and regulated campaign communication.

Create Health is the most communications-led agency in this set. Their value comes from turning complex pharma and medtech topics into clearer campaigns, educational content, and professional-facing messaging. 

For BD’s IVDR 2022 campaign, Create Health developed the Lifting the Fog mini-series to help clinical labs understand the path to compliance. The campaign produced a 68% click-through rate, generated 78 qualified leads, beat the target, and earned a second season.

6. Jack Health

• Why this agency made the list: Jack Health made the list for experiential healthcare marketing tied to launches, congresses, trade shows, and HCP education.
• Healthcare services: Website redesign, brand activation, congress experiences, trade show production, virtual launch support.
• Best fit: Best for pharma, biotech, device, health tech, aesthetics, and wellness brands that need brand-experience execution.

Jack Health operates outside the usual clinic-growth lane. Their work is focused on live, hybrid, and digital experiences that help healthcare brands explain products to patients, prescribers, and internal teams.

The agency created the Photochromic Teleportal for Johnson & Johnson Vision at the American Academy of Optometry meeting, where FDA rules prevented on-site contact testing. Over three days, 412 doctors used the experience, and more than 75 percent said it was helpful.

7. UpThereEverywhere

• Why this agency made the list: UpThereEverywhere made the list for cross-market healthcare growth across patient and HCP audiences.
• Healthcare services: Healthcare SEO, paid search, paid social, website development, content creation, marketing automation.
• Best fit: Best for global aesthetics brands, medical device companies, and health brands that need international campaign support.

UpThereEverywhere is closer to a global health and aesthetics partner than a local provider marketing shop. Their services include brand strategy, search, paid media, website development, and marketing automation for healthcare brands working across several markets. 

For Galderma, UpThereEverywhere supported a global webinar series during a crisis period to reach specialist audiences. The program reached more than 22,000 HCPs worldwide, which points to strength in professional education at scale.

8. WAX

• Why this agency made the list: WAX made the list for patient acquisition and professional audience engagement across hospitals, payers, ACOs, and provider groups.
• Healthcare services: Paid search, paid social, landing page design, website redesign, geofencing, audience targeting.
• Best fit: Best for health systems, hospitals, payers, and large provider groups that need enterprise-scale campaign coverage.

WAX works as a broad healthcare advertising and media partner. Their strength is in research, strategy, web, media, and healthcare data work for organizations that need to influence patients, referring professionals, and decision-makers.

This agency ran a targeted My65+ campaign for ChristianaCare’s two new primary care practices in southern Delaware. The campaign generated 900+ new patients in 9 months, more than double the original 450-patient goal.

9. AGENCY Bristol

• Why this agency made the list: AGENCY Bristol made the list for legal-first patient marketing systems that turn search intent into clinic referrals.
• Healthcare services: Healthcare SEO, paid search, paid social, landing page design, call tracking, HIPAA-aware analytics.
• Best fit: Best for medical device and pharma teams that need compliant direct-to-patient demand generation.

AGENCY Bristol is a UK healthcare marketing firm focused on MedTech and pharma acquisition. Their process starts with compliance, patient personas, search intent, landing pages, and tracking across strict healthcare regulations.

For Zimmer Biomet’s nSTRIDE knee program, AGENCY Bristol developed patient personas, compliant messaging, a find-a-clinic landing page, and symptom-led search ads. The campaign delivered 128 UK clinic referrals in one month at £18.66 cost per acquisition and increased conversion rate by 157%.

10. Practice Builders

• Why this agency made the list: Practice Builders made the list for new-patient growth and retention marketing across medical and dental practices.
• Healthcare services: Medical SEO, website design, reputation management, listing management, new patient targeting, and content marketing.
• Best fit: Best for independent practices, group practices, multispecialty clinics, urgent care centers, and dental practices.

Practice Builders is the most practice-growth-focused agency in this set. Their services cover websites, SEO, reputation management, listings, content, new-patient targeting, and team training for healthcare practices. 

A testimonial from James M. Austin, DDS, says his practice had weak online visibility and declining new-patient volume before working with Practice Builders. He reports that new patient numbers increased by 50% and gross production rose by 20% after the engagement.

11. Hallam

• Why this agency made the list: Hallam made the list for privacy-first healthcare performance marketing in restricted targeting environments.
• Healthcare services: Medical SEO, paid search, audience research, CRO, analytics frameworks.
• Best fit: Best for life sciences, diagnostics, biotech, and specialist healthcare brands with cross-market acquisition needs.

Hallam works best where patient journey visibility, privacy-conscious measurement, and regulated media buying all matter. Their healthcare positioning is all about search, paid media, CRO, analytics, and FDA, EMA, and HIPAA constraints.

For Source BioScience, Hallam used international SEO, PPC, digital PR, and website migration support to increase clinical test demand in the U.S. market. The work produced an 11% year-over-year organic traffic lift, 528% more paid-advertising orders, 12% lower spend, and 114% higher sales revenue.

12. Aha Media Group

• Why this agency made the list: Aha Media Group made the list for healthcare content that supports patient education, SEO visibility, and physician engagement.
• Healthcare services: Healthcare SEO, content strategy, service-line copy, patient stories, and content operations.
• Best fit: Best for hospitals, health systems, and B2B healthcare organizations with large content needs.

Aha Media Group is a content-led healthcare agency. Their services align with organizations that need accurate medical language, search-friendly pages, patient education, and clearer publishing workflows.

This agency helped Roswell Park improve content and physician outreach through SEO-driven thought leadership and email campaigns. The client’s U.S. News specialty reputation ranking moved from 27th to 7th nationally after the content and engagement effort.

13. One Day Agency

• Why this agency made the list: One Day Agency made the list for last-mile healthcare communications across HCP engagement, consumer activation, and event-led media.
• Healthcare services: Paid search, paid social, SEO, video advertising, HCP media targeting.
• Best fit: Best for pharma and medtech brands with launches, congresses, or regional awareness campaigns in the UK and Europe.

One Day Agency approaches healthcare marketing through media activation rather than ongoing patient acquisition. The agency uses digital, OOH, TV, display, and specialist HCP channels to support regulated campaigns around specific market moments. 

For Johnson & Johnson MedTech at EHRA Congress 2026 in Paris, One Day Agency ran a targeted Uber Ads campaign for doctors, cardiologists, researchers, and healthcare decision-makers. The four-day campaign generated 59,264 impressions, 2,078 clicks, and activity across 25,975 completed trips.

14. The Motion Agency

• Why this agency made the list: The Motion Agency made the list for healthcare brand campaigns tied to measurable appointment and traffic lift.
• Healthcare services: Website redesign, paid social, lead generation, public relations, and multichannel planning.
• Best fit: Best for hospitals, orthopedic groups, rehab brands, and provider organizations that need brand and patient-volume growth.

The Motion Agency brings a brand-first lens to patient-facing healthcare campaigns. Their work focuses on building trust, strengthening reputation, educating audiences, and tracking performance across several channels. 

Motion launched a multichannel campaign for Rush’s on-demand virtual care service in two weeks. The campaign drove 4x more traffic to the appointment scheduler page, 215% more unique page views, and a 28% lift in virtual appointments within 90 days.

15. Accelerated Digital Media

• Why this agency made the list: Accelerated Digital Media made the list for HIPAA-aware patient acquisition across paid media, analytics, and attribution.
• Healthcare services: Paid search, paid social, programmatic acquisition, GA4 setup, HIPAA-aware analytics.
• Best fit: Best for digital health, telehealth, online pharmacy, clinical trial recruitment, and urgent care brands.

ADM is more performance-focused than brand-led. Their focus is unusually specific about patient-journey mapping, platform policy, landing page alignment, privacy audits, and attribution.

For PicnicHealth, ADM used SEM, paid social, and programmatic campaigns to recruit patients across seven condition-based observational studies. The work generated 1,444 new patient enrollments in January 2023, cut social cost per enrolled patient by 55%, and reduced overall cost per enrolled patient by 38%.

What Does Patient Acquisition Mean in Healthcare Marketing?

Patient acquisition in healthcare means attracting the right patients and converting them into booked appointments. It also means measuring whether those appointments turn into real clinical or business outcomes.

A lead has limited value if the patient never schedules. A scheduled visit also has limited value if the patient does not arrive. And once the patient arrives, value changes by service line, payer mix, treatment plan, and lifetime patient value.

Tebra’s 2025 Patient Perspectives survey found that 79% of patients read reviews before choosing a provider. It also found that 56% start their provider research on Google, while 41% check practice websites and 38% check WebMD before booking.

For that reason, teams should track key metrics like booked appointments, treatment starts, cost per acquisition, conversion rates, and ROI by location.

Which Services Matter Most In Healthcare Patient Acquisition?

The most important healthcare patient acquisition services are SEO, local search, paid search, paid social, CRO, reputation management, attribution, and compliance workflows. Each service should move patients from need to trust to booking.

These healthcare marketing agency services matter most.

Healthcare SEO

Healthcare SEO should cover key pages, provider bios, insurance info, Google Business Profile, patient-focused search intent, and so much more.

Google receives more than 1 billion health-related questions every day, and about 7% of Google searches are health-related. That makes website SEO work best when content development follows real intent. Also, careful backlink building can support authority.

Local SEO and Google Business Profile

Local SEO matters because patients usually search near me before choosing care. Strong setups cover map pack visibility, location, and provider pages, reviews, appointment links, photos, service categories, etc. Real patient experiences show up here.

Paid Search for Healthcare

Paid search works when campaigns match service-line intent to booking. LocaliQ’s 2026 benchmark analyzed 3,542 U.S. healthcare search campaigns and found averages of 6.07% CTR, $5.64 CPC, 8.09% conversion rate, and $66.02 cost per lead.

Strong campaigns cover branded and non-branded search, local targeting, landing page alignment, and compliant copy. From our experience, we have seen that smart media planning protects spend.

Paid Social for Healthcare

Paid social can support awareness, retargeting, patient education, and certain service lines. But it works best when campaigns use privacy-safe audiences, compliant lead forms, and carefully reviewed testimonials and visuals.

Clear medical education and strong storytelling help explain patient problems. At the same time, patient-centric messaging is especially important for disease state campaigns.

Conversion Rate Optimization

CRO is where many campaigns fail because patients still face long forms, slow pages, unclear insurance details, weak credibility, or confusing appointment buttons. Press Ganey reported that 80% of healthcare consumers say online scheduling influences their provider choice, and nearly one-quarter would walk away if booking was difficult.

CRO should improve scheduling flow, forms, calls, financing, location details, reviews, speed, trust, privacy, and clarity. A little behavioral science reduces friction.

Reputation Management and Reviews

Reviews affect trust and local rankings. Strong programs cover review generation, responses, monitoring, and key platforms like Google and Healthgrades. A clear brand strategy connects these signals to safety, access, and credibility.

Attribution and Reporting

Healthcare reporting should link campaigns to calls, forms, appointments, visits, and service-line and location performance. CRM integration ties marketing to scheduling outcomes, while data must be handled carefully, and tracking kept reliable.

Compliance Workflows

Good agencies review campaigns before launch. They cover HIPAA, PHI, BAAs where needed, clinical claims, testimonials, ad policies, FDA/FTC rules, and medical, legal, and regulatory checks.

They also use privacy-safe analytics and consent-aware tracking. Clear approvals can speed work in complex environments while skilled medical writers keep content accurate.

How Much Should Healthcare Patient Acquisition Marketing Cost?

Healthcare patient acquisition marketing can cost a few thousand dollars per month for a smaller practice and much more for multi-location groups, competitive specialties, or enterprise systems. The better question is how much it costs to acquire the right patient.

First Page Sage’s 2026 report found that average patient acquisition costs vary heavily by specialty, from $155 for Pediatrics to $610 for Cosmetic/Plastic Surgery.

That range explains why one flat benchmark can mislead teams. Costs vary by specialty, competition, payer mix, and growth strategy.

Choose The Agency That Can Prove Patient Growth

The right agency should help you create demand, earn trust, remove booking friction, and measure what happens after the first click. Broad marketing skills still matter, and brand development can support growth when the care decision requires trust. But for patient acquisition, proof matters more than polish.

So, make sure to look for a partner that understands compliance, appointment conversion, service-line economics, and reporting by location. If your team wants better patient engagement and cleaner digital transformation, the agencies listed here can help you assess the gaps and build a plan that fits your stage.

FAQs

What makes healthcare digital marketing agencies different from general agencies?

Healthcare digital marketing agencies are different because they work inside healthcare compliance, patient privacy, clinical claims, and offline appointment workflows. A general agency may optimize leads, but a healthcare partner needs to understand calls, forms, bookings, completed visits, and service-line ROI.

What services should a top healthcare digital marketing agency offer?

A top healthcare digital marketing agency should offer SEO, local search, paid search, paid social, CRO, reputation management, call tracking, attribution, and compliance review. For larger systems, it should also support provider pages, location pages, service-line reporting, and healthcare CRM workflows.

How should hospitals and clinics choose a healthcare marketing partner?

Hospitals and clinics should choose a partner based on patient-acquisition proof, healthcare specialization, compliance process, attribution maturity, and provider-model fit. Independent practices, specialty clinics, PE-backed healthcare groups, MSOs, DSOs, and hospital systems typically need different campaign structures.

Are AI-powered healthcare digital marketing services compliant and safe?

AI-powered healthcare digital marketing services can be safe when they use strong governance, privacy controls, and human review. An AI toolkit should never process PHI casually, generate unsupported claims, or publish medical content without review from the right internal team.

How do healthcare marketing agencies handle HIPAA?

Healthcare marketing agencies handle HIPAA by limiting PHI exposure, using privacy-safe analytics, reviewing tracking tools, and setting clear workflows for forms, pixels, call tracking, and testimonials. BAAs may be needed when vendors handle protected health information.

Most growth teams are wired for acquisition. The metrics are cleaner, the wins are more visible, and there's always another campaign to run. 

But somewhere between the first touchpoint and the second invoice, most teams have no real plan for what happens next. Onboarding becomes an afterthought. Check-ins sound automated and hollow. Feedback gets collected, stored, and rarely turned into action. 

This leak is getting harder to ignore. A 2025 Adobe and Publicis Sapient report found that acquisition costs rose 35% from 2022 to 2025, while customer lifetime value grew only 4.5%. Acquisition can fill the top of the funnel, but retention decides how much revenue actually stays.

Retention helps you build customers who return, spend more, and recommend your brand. Meanwhile, acquisition keeps getting more expensive, particularly when campaigns attract people who respond to a discount, make one purchase, and leave before the relationship has time to grow.

This article breaks down the mindset shift retention really requires (the one most teams skip), the strategies that create durable customer value, and the metrics that show what is actually working. 

P.S. If you want stronger retention marketing strategies that connect customer experience, lifecycle marketing, and loyalty mechanics, 9AM can help. We help you improve LTV modeling, increase repurchase rates, and build more durable revenue through growth systems built around retention.

TL;DR: What You Can Learn

• Retaining a customer costs a fraction of acquiring a new one, yet most brands underinvest in it while continuously spending to replace lost customers.
• You should earn retention first, then deepen it into loyalty.
• High churn quietly destroys profitability; 65% of revenue comes from existing customers.
• The main retention levers are lifecycle marketing, personalized messaging, loyalty programs, subscriptions, customer experience, and win-back campaigns.
• Strong retention raises CLV, improves the CLV:CAC ratio, and makes paid acquisition more profitable without increasing spend.
• Retention doesn't compete with acquisition; it's what makes acquisition worth running.

What Is Retention Marketing?

Retention marketing is the discipline of keeping existing customers engaged, driving repeat purchases, and turning satisfied customers into loyal advocates. Where acquisition asks "how do we get them in?", retention asks "how do we make staying the obvious choice?"

This difference matters because existing customers are usually easier and more profitable to convert. In fact, data shows that selling to existing customers typically has a 60% to 70% success rate, while selling to new prospects typically has a 5% to 20% success rate. So when teams ignore retention, they leave a warmer audience underused while spending more to reach colder buyers.

Cost makes the case even clearer. Acquiring a new customer can cost 5 to 25 times more than keeping an existing one. In SaaS, it can also take 1 to 5 years before a customer becomes profitable, depending on acquisition cost, onboarding time, contract value, and churn risk.

Plus, the upside can be significant. Even a 5% increase in retention can increase profits by 25% to 95%, depending on the business model and margin structure. Loyal customers are also 50% more likely to repurchase and 86% more likely to refer, which means retention can support repeat revenue and word-of-mouth growth at the same time. 

Here are the key differences between retention marketing and acquisition marketing:

Retention vs Loyalty

Retention tells you customers are still buying. Loyalty tells you they have a reason to keep choosing you. This distinction matters because repeat purchases can come from contracts, discounts, habit, or switching friction. Loyalty goes deeper because the customer sees enough value to stay even when another option looks cheaper.

However, you should earn retention before chasing loyalty. If onboarding is weak, product value feels unclear, or churn stays high, loyalty campaigns can only do so much. First, make the customer experience worth repeating. Then loyalty mechanics, referrals, and advocacy programs have something real to build on.

Why Acquisition-First Teams Underestimate Retention

Churn is rarely just a retention problem. For acquisition-focused brands, it's a growing financial drain hiding in plain sight.

U.S. businesses lose an estimated $1.6 trillion annually to customer churn, and they keep spending to replace what they're losing. Plus, acquiring a new customer now costs around $536 in B2B to $1,450 in fintech. 

This pressure creates a hard ceiling on growth. Acquisition-focused teams typically end up with high CAC and too-low CLV, resulting in a CLV ratio well below 3:1, dangerously close to or below 1:1. 

You can make acquisition more efficient, but that only solves part of the problem. 

When we partnered with GenomeLink, a DNA analysis platform competing in one of the more crowded corners of consumer health tech, the brief was straightforward: scale user acquisition without letting CAC spiral. 

Over three years, we built a systematic approach to creative production. Our team produced 70+ unique assets monthly across six formats. Then we combined that creative volume with rigorous cross-platform optimization and conversion testing. 

This approach delivered a 77% reduction in customer acquisition cost. The same budget went significantly further, and the unit economics started working in their favor. 

Still, CAC reduction alone does not finish the growth equation. Retention is what helps CLV get where it needs to be because it turns first-time customers into repeat revenue without requiring more acquisition spend. 

Why Retention Marketing Matters for Business Growth

The following reasons show why retention marketing has become a core growth lever for teams that want stronger margins, better customer value, and more predictable revenue. 

1. Increases Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

Every customer comes with an acquisition cost. Retention is how you earn it back.

CLV shows the total value a customer creates throughout the relationship. It usually depends on three core levers: average order value, purchase frequency, and customer lifespan. 

Retention marketing works across all three levers. It can increase order value through smarter recommendations, improve purchase frequency through timely follow-ups, and extend customer lifespan through better onboarding, support, and customer experience. 

This matters because a customer usually becomes more valuable after the first purchase. They understand the product better, need less persuasion, and give your team more behavioral data with every interaction. 

Each repeat purchase creates stronger signals around preferences, habits, timing, and buying patterns. That data helps teams make the next message more relevant and the next sale more likely. 

That’s why better retention makes every acquisition dollar work harder.

For a deeper breakdown of the early customer moments that shape repeat purchase behavior, read Post-Purchase Moments That Raise LTV in 30 Days

2. Makes Paid Acquisition More Profitable

Paid ads get expensive fast when customers only buy once. The channel economics only work when acquired customers keep coming back.

Higher CLV gives you more room to spend without weakening ROAS. 

• On Google, this can mean bidding more competitively for high-intent searches. 
• On Meta, retention data can help identify your best customers and improve audience signals. 
• On TikTok, loyal customers can extend paid performance through repeat purchases, organic sharing, and stronger product recall. 

So even if the first purchase ROAS stays flat, retained customers can improve total ROAS over time. The acquisition campaign brings the customer in, but retention determines how much value that customer creates afterward. 

3. Improves Profitability

Existing customers understand the product and need far less convincing the second time around. This makes them considerably cheaper and easier to convert than someone who's never heard of you.

Strong retention lowers churn, which means fewer customers need replacing. As a result, the acquisition spend can focus on genuine long-term growth instead of constantly filling the gaps left by lost customers. 

Profitability improves because retained customers usually create more revenue with lower incremental cost. They need less education, move faster through the buying journey, and usually require fewer resources to convert again. 

4. Creates More Predictable Growth

It’s not just that your existing customers know your brand well; you know them well, too. Their purchase history, preferences, and behavior patterns give you a deep understanding that’s hard to replicate with new audiences.

Repeat customers create revenue stability that makes budgets, inventory, and staffing easier to plan. And the first-party data they generate (purchase habits, preferences, service interactions) feeds AI-powered analytics that help you anticipate needs and forecast future behavior more accurately.

Retention Marketing Channels That Actually Deliver

The best retention channels do more than keep your brand visible. They help customers get more value after the first purchase, remind them at the right moment, and make the next step easier. 

The following channels are usually the strongest starting points. 

Email 

Email gives you a direct, low-cost line to customers after the first purchase. It nudges repeat orders, reduces churn, surfaces useful feedback, and keeps the relationship warm.

Unlike paid acquisition, you're not paying to reach people you already earned. Email marketing generates around $36 ROI for every $1 spent, far outperforming Google Ads’ $2 return.

SMS

SMS works best when timing matters. Messages get read within minutes, which makes it the right tool for flash sales, reorder reminders, and loyalty nudges, where waiting 48 hours for an email to open doesn't cut it.

The numbers back this up: SMS carries a 98% open rate and a 45% response rate. This reach matters particularly for short, action-oriented messages, like "you're 10 points from a reward" or "your usual is due soon".

Social Media 

Social media supports retention when it turns customers into active participants instead of passive followers. People stay closer to a brand when they feel heard, see their stories reflected, and know the comments section gets real attention. 

Community spaces can also give customers a stronger reason to stay connected between purchases. Social listening adds another layer because casual comments, complaints, and product questions can reveal what customers actually want next. 

The strongest retention tactics usually include resharing customer stories, responding quickly to useful feedback, creating follower-only moments, and hosting community events for engaged customers. 

These actions make the relationship feel more personal, which helps customers stay connected after the first sale. 

LEGO’s fan programs show how strong communities can turn repeat buyers into active participants who keep the brand relationship alive. 

Paid Retargeting

Paid retargeting helps you reach past purchasers, lapsed customers, cart abandoners, and high-value segments with more relevant messages. Instead of using paid media only to chase new buyers, teams can use it to drive repeat purchases, upsells, replenishment reminders, and win-back campaigns.

It also gives retention teams faster feedback. Campaign data can show which offers, messages, products, and audiences respond best. These insights can then improve email, SMS, lifecycle flows, and the broader retention strategy.

Push Notification

A push notification shows up wherever the user is, which makes timing everything. They work best when the message connects to a clear behavior, such as onboarding progress, abandoned activity, reward status, product usage, or a timely reminder. 

The retention impact is most pronounced early in the customer relationship. Data show that sending a push in a user's first week can increase retention by 71%, and consistent use in the first 90 days can more than double the number of people who stick around. 

The catch is that the format demands discipline. You only have a few words and one chance to feel relevant before a customer mutes alerts or starts ignoring them completely. 

Core Retention Marketing Strategies

Good retention does not come from sending more messages. It comes from understanding where customers slow down, what they need next, and which moments can turn a first purchase into an ongoing relationship.

Below, we have shared some strategies that can help you improve onboarding, repeat purchases, customer value, and long-term engagement without relying only on new traffic.

1. Lifecycle Marketing

Lifecycle marketing treats the customer relationship as a connected journey instead of a one-time conversion. It starts before the first purchase and continues through onboarding, repeat purchases, loyalty, and advocacy. 

The strategy works because each stage needs a different message. A new customer may need reassurance, product education, or setup support. A repeat customer may need restock reminders, relevant recommendations, or early access to something they already care about. 

Behavioral data keeps these messages timely. Purchase history, engagement patterns, product usage, and real customer actions can trigger welcome series, replenishment reminders, re-engagement messages, and win-back flows before interest fades into churn 

Ultimately, lifecycle marketing keeps customers moving forward naturally, without requiring a manual push every time.

2. Personalization

Personalized marketing makes customers feel understood instead of targeted. When a brand remembers what customers bought and anticipates what they might want next, the whole relationship feels less transactional.

The numbers reflect it: personalized emails generate 50% higher open rates. And tailored experiences make consumers 80% more likely to buy. 

Take Starbucks’ example that turns purchase history into personalized challenges and rewards that keep customers coming back with genuine enthusiasm.

3. Loyalty Programs

Loyalty programs give customers a reason to keep choosing your brand after the first purchase. The best ones create value through rewards, access, recognition, and experiences that make customers feel closer to the brand. 

They also keep the relationship active through regular touchpoints. Points, perks, referrals, early access, and member-only offers can turn repeat buying into a more intentional habit.

For example, Nike Connected Membership gives members access to exclusive event invites, discounts, and brand moments that make loyalty feel more personal than a standard points program. 

4. Subscription & Replenishment Programs

Subscriptions work because they remove the repeat purchase decision. When customers receive what they need on schedule, they have fewer reasons to compare options, delay the order, or drift toward a competitor. 

The model earns loyalty through three things: affinity, convenience, and value. Members feel part of something, delivery arrives without effort, and the price is better than buying one-off. This combination builds routine, which is remarkably hard to disrupt. 

For you, the payoff is predictable recurring revenue, and for customers, it removes one more decision from their day. 

5. Customer Experience Optimization

Retention starts long before a loyalty program. Customers decide to stay through the everyday moments that make buying, using, and getting support feel easy. 

Those moments show up in: 

• How smoothly someone onboards
• How little friction they hit when buying again
• How consistent the experience feels across the app, website, email, or support 

The brands that treat customer experience seriously build retention into their revenue models. They track CLV and CSAT with the same urgency as new sales, and treat customer success as a growth function.

6. Customer Feedback & Voice of Customer

Listening to customers is table stakes. Acting on what they say is where retention actually happens. Companies with strong VoC programs see 55% higher retention rates than those without because they act on the answers. When customers see their input drive real decisions, trust grows. 

Orange Telecom shows how practical this can get. The company saved €200,000 in churn in a single year by combining customer feedback with AI-driven analysis to identify at-risk customers early. When teams act on feedback systematically, listening becomes a revenue strategy. 

7. Win-Back Campaigns

Churn does not always mean the relationship is over. Sometimes it means the customer paused, forgot, lost momentum, or no longer saw enough value to return. 

Win-back campaigns exist to close that gap. They identify at-risk customers early, then re-engage inactive buyers before they fully move on. That timing matters because lapsed customers already know your product and have trusted it before. 

They also give you a useful head start. A returning customer may need a clearer reminder, a better offer, a product update, or a reason to revisit the value they missed. 

GoDaddy's approach illustrates this cleanly. They revived inactive customers with a straightforward 30% discount on new purchases: a clear, effective nudge that brought users back.

Key Retention Metrics Acquisition Teams Should Own

At 9AM, we look at retention metrics as part of the full growth system, instead of a separate reporting layer. Below, we have shared the key numbers acquisition teams should own once a customer makes the first purchase. 

How to Build a Retention-First Mindset in an Acquisition Team

The simplest shift in retention thinking is also the most overlooked. 

Stop measuring success only by how many new customers you acquired. Start measuring it by how much value those customers create after the first purchase. 

This means tying goals to LTV and reviewing acquisition performance by how well each cohort retains. It also means building feedback loops between your paid media, CRM, CX, and product teams. 

These functions generate signals that are genuinely useful to each other. A spike in churn may point back to a campaign that attracted the wrong audience. A product complaint in support may reveal a retention risk before it turns into lost revenue. 

Most importantly, treat retention as a revenue line, something you forecast, invest in, and optimize. The brands that do this retain more customers and grow more predictably.

Read Next: CAC Payback Period: LTV Modeling That Finance Will Trust

How 9AM Helps Brands Improve Retention Marketing

If you want a smarter approach to keeping customers, our team at 9AM can help you build retention strategies that grow steadily. We work across customer lifecycle strategy, email and SMS campaigns, and paid media informed by LTV, connecting every stage of the customer journey into a system you can actually see. 

Customer acquisition and retention, measured together, with reporting that tells you what's working and where customers are slipping away.

Ready to turn your retention into a catalyst for growth? Book your strategy call!

FAQs

Why do most growth teams underinvest in retention?

Growth teams underinvest in retention because acquisition is easier to track, easier to report, and usually has clearer budget ownership. Retention needs input from CRM, product, CX, and analytics, so it mostly gets delayed. As a result, teams keep funding new customer volume while missing the revenue already sitting inside existing customers. 

What is a good customer retention rate?

 A good retention rate depends on the industry and the business model, but a median rate of around 75% is generally considered healthy. SaaS companies usually aim for 85–95% monthly retention, while ecommerce may see 25–40% repeat‑purchase retention. What matters most is improving your baseline over time. If retention is rising, customer value, revenue predictability, and growth efficiency rise with it.

Which retention marketing channels deliver the highest ROI?

Email marketing consistently delivers the strongest ROI due to its low cost, direct reach, and high level of personalization. SMS and push notifications perform well for timely, high‑intent messages. Paid retargeting, in-app messaging, and loyalty programs can also perform well when they target known customers with timely, relevant offers. 

How does 9AM help brands with digital retention marketing?

At 9AM, we build retention marketing systems that keep customers buying, reduce churn, and grow lifetime value. Our team connects the right channels (email, SMS, paid, lifecycle programs) to the right moments in the customer journey, so your retention efforts grow.

Does 9AM provide transparent insight into its retention and performance marketing approach?

Yes. We build dashboards that make retention performance visible and actionable: churn rates, repeat purchase frequency, CLTV, campaign attribution, and channel contribution, all in one place. You'll always know what's working, what isn't, and where the next opportunity is.

Appendix ▼

CTR (Click-Through Rate) used to be the metric everyone watched first.

If people clicked, the ad looked like it was working. If they did not, you changed the headline, CTA, landing page, or audience targeting.

But in today’s feed-first world, a CTR you don’t interpret in context can hide the bigger problem. 

Your video ad can show up in Meta Ads, TikTok, YouTube Shorts, Reels placements, or LinkedIn video and still get scrolled past before you even get to the point.

This matters because short-form video is now where a lot of marketing attention goes. HubSpot’s 2026 data shows that short-form video is the most used media format by marketers, with 49% ranking it as the top ROI-driving content format. 

So, yes, CTR still matters. It shows whether someone cared enough to act on your message. 

But hook rate answers the earlier question: Did they stop long enough to see/ understand that message?

This is why measurement needs to go beyond clicks. At 9AM, we help you build stronger marketing measurement frameworks that connect early creative signals with clicks, conversions, attribution, and revenue. 

In this blog, we’ll cover:

• What hook rate means and how it differs from the thumb stop ratio
• Why CTR still matters, but cannot explain the full creative performance story
• How hook rate, hold rate, completion rate, conversion rates, and CPA work together
• How to measure hook rates across Meta Ads, TikTok Ads Manager, YouTube Ads, and Reels placements
• How to improve hook rate without creating clickbait
• How to use hook variants, A/B testing, and creative analysis to improve your creative strategy

So, let’s get started.

TL;DR: What You Can Learn From This Article

If you only have a few seconds, below’s the gist of it (though we promise, you can find lots of useful, in-depth information below).

• CTR shows click intent, but hook rate shows whether the creative earned attention first.
• Hook rate is most useful when interpreted in the context of metrics like hold rate, CTR, conversions, CPA, and revenue.
• Meta, TikTok, YouTube, LinkedIn, and other organic social platforms measure early attention differently.
• Strong hooks qualify the right viewer instead of chasing empty attention.
• The first few seconds should make the audience, problem, or outcome clear.
• High hook rate does not always mean strong performance if hold rate or conversions drop.
• Creative testing works best when you change one hook variable at a time.
• The best teams treat hook rate as part of creative analysis, not a standalone success metric.

What Is the Hook Rate?

The hook rate measures the percentage of people who keep watching after the first few seconds of a video ad or creative impression.

In simple terms, it tells you whether your opening actually stopped the scroll.

For Meta Ads, hook rate is mostly calculated using 3-second video views:

So if your video gets 10,000 impressions and 2,500 three-second video views, your hook rate is 25%.

Hook Rate vs Thumbstop Rate

Both metrics point to the same idea: your creative has to win the first few seconds before the rest of the message can do its job.

However, expert marketers understand the nuance between them:

The thumbstop ratio focuses on the behavior. It asks whether someone stopped scrolling. Hook rate, on the other hand, focuses more on the creative mechanism. It asks whether the first frame, opening line, motion, visual contrast, or on-screen prompt earned attention.

The CTR Is No Longer the First Signal That Matters

CTR became the default because it matched how the older web (and traditional marketing) worked.

Users had more control over the path.

• A search ad answered a query.
• An email CTA reached someone who had already subscribed.
• A display banner appeared beside the content someone had chosen to read.
• A website link appeared while someone was already exploring a topic.

So CTR made sense as a first signal. The user had already entered the journey.

That logic becomes weaker inside TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts, LinkedIn video, Meta Ads, and other ad platforms where people move through content quickly.

There, the click is no longer the starting point. 

Today’s Marketing Happens Inside Attention Feeds

In social feeds, users are filtering.

And you are competing inside extremely crowded spaces. Facebook reports 200 million companies are on the platform. This means every impression is hard-earned. Over 90% of businesses in general use social media to connect with their followers.

So, your video ad appears between creators, memes, news, friends, product demos, user-generated content, AI video ads, and platform-native posts.

This makes the opening seconds critical. If the first frame, first line, or on-screen prompt does not feel relevant, the viewer moves on before the offer appears.

Remember: A strong CTA or landing page cannot fix a creative that gets skipped before the message starts. But monitoring your hook rates diligently helps you catch this problem early. 

The Attention Funnel Comes Before The Conversion Funnel

The old question was: Did they click?

The better question now is: Did the right audience stop long enough to care?

This shift matters because people do not move straight from impression to conversion. The path usually looks more like this:

Impression > stop > watch > understand > research some more > believe > click > convert > retain

Each stage tells you something different.

• If people do not stop, the opening needs work.
• If they stop but leave quickly, the payoff is weak.
• If they watch but do not click, the offer or CTA may need clarity.
• If they click but do not convert, the issue may be audience fit, landing page quality, or offer strength.

So CTR still has a role, but it should not be the first signal you rely on for video-led creative performance.

The Shift From Click Optimization to Attention Optimization

Performance marketing used to be more click-led. You optimized keywords, improved ad copy, increased CTR, lowered CPC, tested landing pages, and scaled what converted.

As we explained above, this still matters. But in feed-first channels, a click comes after a more basic win: attention.

The Old Performance Marketing Model

The older model was built around improving what happened after someone showed intent. 

You tracked:

• Keyword performance
• Ad copy quality
• CTR
• CPC
• Landing page conversion
• CPA, CAC payback periods, or ROAS

If CTR dropped, you reviewed the headline or CTA. If conversion rates dropped, you reviewed the landing page or offer.

This process still works for search and high-intent campaigns. But for Meta Ads, TikTok, Reels placements, YouTube Shorts, and other feed-based formats, it can miss the first creative problem: Did the viewer stop long enough for the message to matter? 

The New Creative Performance Model

The newer model starts with the opening.

You test hook variants, measure early attention, review hold rate, study completion rate, and check where video viewers drop off. Then you connect that creative analysis to CTR, CPA, CAC, pipeline, or revenue.

This makes your creative analysis more useful. 

You can see which hook earned attention, which message kept people watching, which proof created trust, and which CTA moved them forward.

TikTok’s own ad guidance reflects this shift. It recommends introducing the content proposition in the first 3 seconds and prioritizing the hook in the first 6 seconds. 

In fact, TikTok has also reported that 90% of ad recall impact is captured within the first 6 seconds.

Why This Shift Matters Now

Feeds move fast, and creative fatigue can show up quickly.

This means your creative strategy needs regular A/B testing, fresh hook variants, and smart creative revisions. The same opening may work for a few days, then lose strength as audience engagement drops.

Ad platforms are also more automated. Meta says Advantage+ sales campaigns use AI to optimize creative, targeting, placements, and budget.

So your creative now carries more of the targeting work.

A broad ad set or lookalike audience can help distribution, but the hook tells the platform and the viewer who the message is for. If the opening is too broad, you may attract the wrong attention. And if it is too vague, the right buyers may scroll before they understand the offer.

This is why attention optimization now comes before click optimization.

Hook Rate vs CTR: The Practical Difference

Hook rate and CTR answer different questions.

Hook rate tells you whether the opening made someone pause. And CTR tells you whether the message made someone act.

So, you should not interpret either metric without proper context. A strong video ad needs to get noticed first, hold attention long enough for the message to land, and give the right viewer a clear reason to click. 

Here’s the practical difference between the most important marketing metrics:

How to Measure Hook Rate Across Channels

Hook rate is not measured the same way everywhere.

Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, YouTube Ads, Reels placements, LinkedIn, and websites all give you different signals. So instead of forcing one universal benchmark across every channel, we recommend comparing each channel against its own behavior.

Start with the platform definition, then compare your results by format, placement, audience, and campaign objective.

Meta ads

For Meta Ads, hook rate is usually calculated with 3-second video plays and impressions.

Meta defines 3-second video plays as the number of times your video played for at least three seconds, or nearly its full length if the video is shorter than three seconds.

Meta Ads Manager does not always show hook rate as a default column, so you may need to create it as a custom metric. Meta’s own setup path is simple: go to Ads Manager, select Columns, choose Customize columns, then select Create custom metric.

Once you have the metric, do not read it alone. Compare the hook rate with the metrics we mentioned above.

You should also segment it by placement. A video ad in Instagram feed may behave differently from the same creative in Reels placements, Facebook feed, or Audience Network. One ad set can also hide useful differences if the placements are mixed together.

Use benchmarks only as a starting point. Published hook rate ranges usually treat 25% to 30% as solid, 30% to 40% as good, and 40%+ as very strong on Meta. But your own account history is usually more useful because it reflects your audience, offer, format, and creative style.

Insider tip: Do not scale or kill a Meta campaign based on hook rate alone. A high hook rate can still fail if the hold rate drops, CTR is weak, or conversions do not follow.

TikTok ads

TikTok hook rate needs a slightly different read because TikTok Ads Manager gives you several early-view signals.

Start with 2-second video views for a quick hook check. TikTok defines this as the number of times your video starts playing for at least 2 seconds in an impression session. 

For deeper creative analysis, also review 6-second video views, focused views, average play time, and video views at 100%.

Pro tip: In our daily practice, we have noticed that 2-second views are useful for testing the opening, but they do not tell the full story. To understand whether the message held attention, compare them with 6-second views, average play time, and completion metrics.

Also, watch TikTok trends carefully. A trend can help your video feel native to the feed, but it should not replace message clarity. If the trend attracts the wrong viewers, the hook rate may look good while CTR, conversion rates, or CPA still struggle.

Note: Use this table as a directional guide. Your best benchmark is still your own TikTok Ads Manager history across audience, format, offer, and creative style.

Read Next: TikTok Ads vs Meta Ads: How to Brief Differently for Each Platform

YouTube, LinkedIn, and Organic Social

YouTube, LinkedIn, and organic social do not always give you a clean hook rate metric, the way Meta Ads Manager or TikTok Ads Manager might.

So here, you need to read early attention through behavior.

Look at:

• Retention
• Average watch duration
• Replays
• Drop-off points
• Video views
• Comments
• Saves
• Profile visits
• Engagement quality
• Assisted pipeline signals

Review the first 1 to 3 seconds separately. This is where you can see whether the opening frame, first line, text overlay, or visual movement gave people a reason to keep watching.

From what we have seen, B2B content typically creates value before it creates a click. Someone may watch, save, comment, visit your profile, search your brand later, or bring it up in a sales conversation before they ever click.

Therefore, hook rate should be read in the context of audience quality, rather than raw volume alone.

So:

• Look for patterns in videos with a stronger completion rate, saves, comments, or replays. If an organic post keeps the right people watching, treat it as an input for paid creative testing. 
• Pull the winning hook, format, angle, or first-frame idea into your next Meta Ads, TikTok, or YouTube Ads test.

How to Improve Hook Rate Without Creating Clickbait

Remember: a better hook does not have to be louder. It has to be more relevant.

Your goal is to make the right person pause, understand why the message matters, and keep watching long enough to reach the offer.

Below, we have shared a few ways to do that without turning your creative into clickbait:

1. Use the Stop, Signal, Sustain, Sell Framework

Use this simple framework when reviewing hook variants:

• Stop: Create the pause with a strong first frame, motion, contrast, pain-point recognition, or a direct audience callout.
• Signal: Show who the video is for so you attract the right viewers instead of broad, low-quality attention.
• Sustain: Deliver on the opening with proof, examples, contrast, or a clear story.
• Sell: Connect the idea to a next step and make the CTA specific.

For example, a weak hook might say:

“Want better ad performance?”

A stronger version would be:

“Your Meta Ads may not have a targeting problem. They may have a first-three-seconds problem.”

This hook works harder because it creates a pause, signals the audience, introduces a clear problem, and sets up the rest of the video to explain what to fix.

If your hook stops people but does not signal the right audience, you may get attention that never turns into CTR, conversion rates, or revenue. A strong hook should pull in the right people and set up the rest of the video ad to do its job.

2. Make The First 3 Seconds Specific

Once the hook idea is clear, tighten the execution.

Cut anything that delays the point. Avoid any kind of long setup, logo-first intro, slow product reveal, or generic opening line.

Your first 3 seconds should answer one of these quickly:

• Who is this for?
• What problem are we talking about?
• What outcome should the viewer expect?
• Why should they keep watching?

Pro tip: We suggest using on-screen prompts when the spoken line needs support. For example, if the creator says, “This is why your ads are getting clicks but no sales,” the text overlay can say:

High CTR, low conversions? Check the hook.

This gives the viewer context even with the sound off and makes the opening easier to understand. 

Read Next: The Rise of Micro-Moments: Capturing Intent in a 3-Second World

3. Match Hook Intensity to Offer Depth

Not every offer needs the same kind of hook.

High-intensity hooks can work well for impulse products, where the buyer needs a quick reason to care. But B2B and high-consideration offers need credibility much faster.

For complex offers, curiosity alone is not enough. Your hook should signal expertise, context, or a sharp problem the buyer already recognizes.

Someone may respond to urgency as part of a DTC messaging ladder:

“This serum sold out twice for a reason.”

A B2B buyer usually needs a more specific reason to trust you:

“Your paid social problem may not be targeting. It may be creative fatigue showing up before CTR drops.”

This matters even more in B2B. LinkedIn’s 95-5 rule says 95% of potential buyers are not ready to buy today. So your hook needs to build memory and trust before it drives an immediate click. 

The deeper the offer, the more your hook needs to prove that the rest of the message is worth their time.

4. Use Hook Types That Qualify the Right Viewer

A strong hook should help the right viewer recognize themselves fast. Different hook types do that in different ways.

• Problem hook: Leads with a pain point your audience already feels. This works well when the buyer knows something is wrong but may not know the cause.

For example, for National Debt Relief, we used a problem hook built around debt stress instead of leading with the offer. The opening shows someone overwhelmed by bills, with the line “she hasn’t slept in weeks because of debt stress.” It works because the pain is clear before the solution appears. 

• Contrarian hook: Challenges a common belief. Use this when you want to interrupt familiar thinking and make the viewer reconsider.
• Data hook: Opens with a number, trend, or performance insight. This works when your audience responds to proof or wants a sharper reason to pay attention.
• Identity hook: Calls out a specific role, team, or buyer type. This helps filter broad audiences and attract the people the message is actually for.
• Mistaken belief hook: Points out something the audience may be measuring or interpreting incorrectly. This works well for educational or thought-leadership content.
• Before-and-after hook: Shows a shift from one way of working to a better one. Use this when you want to make a change feel clear and practical.

Here’s a perfect example of an ad our team created for HiSmile using a similar before-and-after pattern. 

• Question hook: Asks something the viewer has likely wondered but may not have said out loud. This works when the question creates instant relevance.
• Visual hook: Uses the first frame, motion, product use, expression, text overlay, or dynamic animation to create the pause before the spoken message lands.

The best hook type depends on the viewer’s awareness level. Cold audiences typically need a clear problem or identity signal. Whereas warmer audiences may respond better to proof, contrast, or a sharper point of view.

5. Test One Hook Variable at a Time

In our daily practice, we test one hook variable at a time because it keeps creative analysis clean. This means changing the first line, first frame, visual format, speaker, problem angle, audience callout, proof point, or CTA placement while keeping the offer and audience stable.

If you change everything at once, you will not know what actually improved the hook rate. 

Rotate hook variants one at a time, whether you are testing user-generated content, AI video ads, product footage, or dynamic animation. This makes creative revisions easier and gives your team a cleaner creative testing framework.

A Better Way to Diagnose Creative Performance

Metrics are only useful when they tell you what to fix next. Based on our experience working with different clients, we have learned that the cleanest read comes from looking at hook rate, hold rate, CTR, conversions, and CPA together. 

If the Hook Rate is Low

Your opening is not creating a pause. Rework the first frame, remove intro fluff, make the pain point clearer, test a stronger audience callout, use sharper contrast or motion, and bring the outcome earlier. 

If the Hook Rate is High, But the Hold Rate is Low

This means the opening got attention, but the content did not hold it. The payoff may be too slow, the message may not match the hook, or the video may need tighter pacing. 

If Hook and Hold are High, But CTR is Low

People are interested, but they may not see a clear next step. This is a signal to strengthen your CTA, clarify the offer, and bring social proof or product proof earlier.

If CTR is High, But Conversions are Low

The click is happening, but buyer intent may be weak. Check whether your hook is attracting curiosity instead of buyers, and make sure your landing page matches the ad promise. 

If CPA is High Despite Strong Attention Metrics

This signals that attention is not turning into commercial intent. In this case, we recommend revisiting the offer, pricing, funnel, audience quality, and where your ad spend is going before scaling the video ad. 

The Future: From CTR-First Marketing to Attention-Led Growth

As ad platforms automate more targeting decisions, creative has to carry clearer signals. Broad audiences need hooks that tell both the viewer and the platform who the message is for. Vague hooks create vague signals. Strong hooks help the right people self-select before you spend more budget trying to find them.

The best marketing teams will think like editors and performance analysts at the same time. 

This is why hook libraries, first-frame testing, opening-line analysis, creative scorecards, attention benchmarks, creative fatigue monitoring, and post-click quality checks will become part of normal creative operations.

The old question was, “Which ad got the most clicks?” The better question is, “Which idea earned the right attention and moved the right people forward?”

Turn Hook Rate into Revenue Clarity with 9AM 

If you want a clearer way to read creative performance, our team at 9AM can help you turn early attention signals into decisions your team can actually use. We connect creative analysis, attribution, and revenue data so you can see which ads deserve more budget and which need another round of testing.

Ready to see where your creative is winning or leaking performance? Book your strategy call!

FAQs 

Is the hook rate better than CTR?

Not always. Hook rate is better for diagnosing whether your opening stopped the scroll. CTR is better for measuring whether the message, offer, and CTA created click intent. You can use the hook rate to fix the first few seconds and CTR to judge whether the ad gave people a reason to act.

What is a good hook rate?

A good hook rate depends on the platform, format, audience, placement, and campaign objective. For Meta Ads, 25% to 30% is often a workable baseline, 30% to 39% is strong, and 40%+ is excellent. For TikTok, 30% to 35% is usually solid, while 40%+ is strong, but TikTok hook rates can look higher because the platform uses a shorter 2-second view metric.

But remember, your most important benchmark is still your own account history by ad set, creative type, audience, and offer.

What are the 7 types of hooks?

The 7 common hook types are:

• Problem hook: Leads with a pain point
• Contrarian hook: Challenges a common belief
• Data hook: Opens with a number or insight
• Identity hook: Calls out a specific audience
• Mistaken belief hook: Corrects a wrong assumption
• Before-and-after hook: Shows a clear shift
• Question hook: Asks something the viewer already cares about

A visual hook can support any of these through the first frame, motion, product use, expression, or text overlay.

What are the hook rate and hold rate?

Hook rate shows how many people stayed through the first few seconds of a video. Hold rate, on the other hand, shows how many of those early viewers kept watching after the hook. A high hook rate with a low hold rate usually means the opening worked, but the payoff, pacing, or message did not hold attention.

How to calculate hook rate and hold rate?

For Meta Ads, hook rate is commonly calculated as:

Hook rate = 3-second video views ÷ impressions × 100

Example: 2,500 three-second video views ÷ 10,000 impressions × 100 = 25%

Hold rate can be calculated as:

Hold rate = 15-second video views ÷ 3-second video views × 100

Example: 1,000 fifteen-second views ÷ 2,500 three-second views × 100 = 40%

How does 9AM help brands use hook rate?

At 9AM, we help you connect the hook rate with hold rate, CTR, conversion rates, CPA, ROAS, and revenue. This makes it easier for you to see whether the creative problem is happening in the opening, the message, the CTA, or the post-click funnel.

Can 9AM build dashboards for the hook rate and creative performance?

Yes. At 9AM, we build custom dashboards that track early attention, creative performance, attribution, and revenue in one place. This is useful when your team is running Meta Ads, TikTok ads, YouTube Ads, or cross-channel campaigns.

Appendix

• https://newmediaservices.com.au/how-many-businesses-use-social-media 
• https://ai.meta.com/ai-for-good/datasets/small-business-surveys/ 
• https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics
• https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article/creative-best-practices
• https://ads.tiktok.com/business/en/blog/creative-best-practices-top-performing-ads
• https://www.facebook.com/business/ads/meta-advantage-plus/sales-campaigns
• https://www.facebook.com/business/help/743427195703387
• https://www.facebook.com/business/help/698045821051774
• https://ads.tiktok.com/help/article/video-play
• https://business.linkedin.com/advertise/resources/b2b-institute/b2b-research/trends/95-5-rule

Performance Max campaigns can drive strong results, but they can also make branded and non-branded traffic harder to separate.

Google says advertisers using Performance Max see 27% more conversions at a similar cost per action on average. But if your campaign is heavily capturing branded searches, these numbers may not reflect actual incremental growth.

That’s where Performance Max brand exclusions come in.

They help you control branded traffic inside PMax, so you can better understand whether your campaign is driving new demand or capturing people who already know the brand. 

So if you’re trying to figure out whether your Performance Max campaigns are actually driving new customer growth or just capturing branded demand, 9AM can assist. We help you scale Google Ads performance through media buying services focused on clearer attribution and profitable growth. 

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What brand exclusions are and how they work in Performance Max
• Brand exclusions vs negative keywords vs brand inclusions
• When you should exclude competitor, branded, or reseller terms
• How to add brand exclusions to new and existing PMax campaigns
• Best practices, troubleshooting tips, and the latest Performance Max updates

What Are Brand Exclusions in Performance Max?

Brand exclusions in Performance Max help you stop your ads from appearing on specific branded searches.

This becomes useful when you want your PMax campaign to focus more on new customer acquisition instead of picking up traffic from people who are already searching for your brand or a competitor’s brand.

For example, let’s say you already run a dedicated branded Search campaign. If your Performance Max campaign also starts showing for those same branded queries, it can make reporting harder to analyze. Your ROAS may look stronger because branded searches usually convert at a higher rate.

Brand exclusions help you clean that up.

In Performance Max, brand exclusions apply across:

• Search inventory
• Shopping inventory
• YouTube Search inventory

So if someone searches for an excluded brand on one of these placements, your ads may stop appearing for those searches.

There’s one important exception here.

Google still gives you the option to allow Shopping ads to appear for excluded brand searches. This setting is useful for e-commerce brands, resellers, and multi-brand stores that still want Shopping visibility while restricting other ad placements.

Google identifies brand exclusions using brand entities instead of standard keyword matching. This means you’re excluding recognized brands from Google’s database rather than manually blocking individual search terms.

As a result, brand exclusions give you broader control compared to traditional negative keywords.

Brand Exclusions vs Negative Keywords vs Brand Inclusions

Brand exclusions, negative keywords, and brand inclusions all help you control where your ads show. The difference is how much control each one gives you and what type of traffic you’re trying to manage.

Brand Exclusions

Brand exclusions block selected brand entities from your campaign.

This tells Google that you don’t want your ads to show for searches connected to a specific brand. That could be your own brand, competitor brands, reseller brands, or partner brands you don’t want PMax targeting.

Use brand exclusions when you want to manage branded traffic at the brand level instead of adding every possible keyword variation manually.

Negative Keywords

Negative keywords block specific search terms or phrases.

They work best when you need to filter precise queries. For example, you may want to block terms like “free,” “jobs,” “used,” “cheap,” or any query that does not match your offer. 

Performance Max now supports campaign-level negative keywords and negative keyword lists. Google says you can apply up to 10,000 negative keywords to a Performance Max campaign, and those negative keywords apply to Search and Shopping inventory.

So: 

• If you want to block a full brand, brand exclusions are usually cleaner. 
• If you want to block a specific phrase or intent pattern, negative keywords give you tighter query control. 

Brand Inclusions or Restrictions

Brand inclusions work in the opposite direction.

Instead of blocking selected brands, they help limit a campaign to selected brand traffic. This is useful when you want a campaign to focus on specific branded searches rather than broader non-brand discovery.

For example, a brand-focused Search strategy may use brand inclusions to stay close to high-intent branded demand. This can help when you want tighter control over which brand terms your ads can serve on.

For Performance Max, advertisers usually talk about this as a “brand-only” setup, where the campaign is shaped around branded demand instead of broader acquisition.

When Should You Use Brand Exclusions?

You should use brand exclusions when you want Performance Max to focus on new demand instead of branded traffic that already has strong intent.

They make the most sense when you want to:

• Avoid showing ads on competitor brand searches
• Separate branded and non-branded campaign performance
• Reduce spend on searches that are unlikely to bring new customers
• Make reporting easier to read and explain
• Protect dedicated branded Search campaigns from PMax overlap

How to Find Which Brands to Exclude

The hardest part about brand exclusions is usually figuring out which brands are actually affecting your Performance Max traffic.

A good place to start is Search Terms Insights inside Google Ads. This helps you spot branded queries your PMax campaign is already picking up.

As you review the data, look for patterns like:

• Competitor brand searches
• Reseller or marketplace brands
• Affiliate traffic
• Irrelevant branded queries
• Your own branded searches

If you already run a dedicated branded Search campaign, seeing your own brand appear heavily inside PMax is usually a sign that exclusions may help clean up reporting and acquisition performance.

For most accounts, your brand exclusion list will usually include:

• Your own brand
• Top 5 competitors
• Reseller or marketplace brands
• Partner or affiliate brands

Once you know which brands belong on your exclusion list, the next step is applying that list to your Performance Max campaign. 

How to Add Brand Exclusions to a Performance Max Campaign

Google lets you apply brand exclusions both while creating a new Performance Max campaign and inside an existing campaign’s settings. The setup process only takes a few minutes, but choosing the right brand list can make a big difference in how clean your PMax traffic becomes. 

New PMax Campaign

If you’re creating a new Performance Max campaign, you can add brand exclusions during the campaign setup process.

Here’s how to do it:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Create icon.

2. Click Campaigns.

3. Create a new Performance Max campaign.

4. When you reach the Campaign settings section, click More settings.

5. Click Brand exclusions.

6. Select the brand list you want to apply.

7. If you do not already have one, click New brand list and create it.

8. Choose whether to check Allow Shopping ads on searches that mention excluded brands.

• Check it if you still want Shopping ads to appear when someone searches for an excluded brand.
• Leave it unchecked if you want stricter exclusions across supported PMax inventory.

9. Complete the rest of your campaign setup.

We recommend deciding whether to allow Shopping ads or not based on your campaign goal. If your campaign is built for clean non-brand acquisition, keep Shopping restricted too. If you’re a reseller or multi-brand retailer, allowing Shopping ads may still make sense. 

Note: One thing to keep in mind is that Google uses a predefined brand library for brand exclusions. So if a brand doesn’t exist in Google’s system yet, you may need to request it manually before you can exclude it. 

As per Google, brand approval can sometimes take 4 to 6 weeks, so it’s worth submitting those requests early if you already know which brands you want to block.

Existing PMax Campaign

If your Performance Max campaign is already running, you can still add brand exclusions from the campaign settings.

Here’s how:

1. In your Google Ads account, click the Campaigns icon.

2. Open the Campaigns drop-down menu.

3. Click Campaigns.

4. Go to the Settings tab.

5. Select the Performance Max campaign you want to update.

6. Scroll to Additional settings.

7. Click Brand exclusions.

8. Choose an existing brand list or create a new one.
9. Decide whether you want to allow Shopping ads on searches that mention excluded brands.
10. Click Save.

After saving, give the campaign some time before judging the impact. Then check your Search Terms Insights and performance data to see whether branded traffic starts dropping from PMax.

Performance Max Brand Exclusions Best Practices

Brand exclusions work best when you use them with a clear campaign goal. The point is not to block every brand you can find. The goal is to keep PMax focused on the traffic you actually want.

Below, we have shared a few best practices that we follow when managing Performance Max brand exclusions:

• Use exclusions to keep Performance Max focused on non-brand traffic.
• Avoid excluding too many brands at once, since that can limit useful reach.
• Review Search Terms Insights regularly to catch new branded queries.
• Organize brand lists by campaign goal, such as own brand, competitors, partners, or resellers.
• Align exclusions with your Search campaign structure so PMax does not compete with branded Search.
• Combine brand exclusions with negative keywords when you need both brand-level and query-level control.

Based on our experience, we recommend applying brand exclusions in stages instead of changing everything at once.

Start with your own brand and the most obvious competitor or reseller terms, then review fresh campaign data before adding more exclusions. This makes it easier to understand which changes improved traffic quality and which ones may have limited useful reach.

A simple rule: if a brand term makes your reporting messy or pulls budget away from new demand, it probably belongs on your review list.

How to Measure the Impact of Performance Max Brand Exclusions

After you apply brand exclusions, don’t judge the change too quickly. Give the campaign a little time to collect fresh data, then compare performance before and after the update.

Start with your non-brand numbers. Look at non-brand CPL, which is the cost of generating leads from non-branded traffic only, or non-brand ROAS before the exclusions were added. Then compare them to the performance after the change.

You should also track:

• Conversion volume
• CPA
• ROAS
• Conversion rate
• Impression volume
• Search Terms Insights
• Branded Search campaign performance

A good checkpoint is 7 to 14 days after implementation. Review Search Terms Insights and see whether branded queries have dropped from your PMax traffic.

Then compare Performance Max against your branded Search campaigns. If your brand Search campaign starts capturing more of the branded demand again, and Performance Max becomes more focused on non-brand traffic, your exclusions are doing their job.

How to Troubleshoot Performance Max Brand Exclusions

Even after you apply brand exclusions, you may still see some unexpected traffic or performance shifts. That does not always mean the setup is broken. In many cases, you just need to check the settings and give the campaign enough time to adjust.

The most common issues you should look for are:

Brand exclusions are not applying immediately

Brand exclusions may take some time to reflect in your campaign data. If you just added them, avoid making another major change right away. We recommend giving your campaign some time to collect fresh data, then checking Search Terms Insights again.

Shopping ads are still showing for excluded brands

This usually happens because the Shopping setting is enabled. Check whether “Shopping ads on searches that mention excluded brands” is turned on. If it is, Shopping ads can still appear for those excluded brand searches.

Traffic dropped after applying exclusions

We usually see this in our daily practice when Performance Max was getting a meaningful share of conversions from branded searches before the change. 

So, before reversing the exclusion, check conversion quality, non-brand ROAS, CPA, and branded Search performance. A traffic drop is not always bad if the remaining traffic is cleaner. 

Branded search leakage is still appearing

If branded queries still show up, check whether you selected the right brand entity in Google’s brand library. For leftover phrases that do not get covered cleanly, add campaign-level negative keywords. This helps close the gaps that brand exclusions may miss.

2026 Performance Max Updates for Brand Exclusions: What’s New 

Google has added more controls and reporting for Performance Max, which matters if you’re using brand exclusions to clean up traffic quality.

The following are the updates worth knowing:

• Format-specific Shopping controls: In January 2025, Google announced new brand exclusion controls for retailer campaigns with product feeds. The update lets retailers apply brand exclusions specifically to Search text ads, while still capturing branded traffic through Shopping ads. In other words, it’s a Search-only exclusion option for retailers.
• Expanded “where ads showed” reporting: In February 2026, Google Ads expanded the “where ads showed” report for Performance Max. Performance Max campaigns now display Search Partner Network placements directly within the “When and where ads showed” report; previously PMax showed empty rows or “Other” categories.
• Account-level placement exclusions: In January 2026, Google Ads started allowing account-level placement exclusions across campaigns, including Performance Max, Demand Gen, YouTube, and Display. This gives you one central place to block unwanted placements.

Note: Starting May 27, 2025, Google began moving brand exclusions in Search campaigns into AI Max settings. This does not affect Performance Max campaigns directly, but it can still create confusion if you manage brand controls across both Search and PMax campaigns. 

Improve your Performance Max Strategy with 9AM 

Performance Max brand exclusions give you more control over where your ads appear and how your campaign performance is measured. 

Whether you want to separate branded and non-branded traffic, reduce wasted spend, or keep PMax from overlapping with branded Search campaigns, the right exclusion strategy can make your reporting cleaner and your acquisition efforts easier to scale.

Key takeaways

• Brand exclusions help stop Performance Max from targeting selected branded searches
• Exclusions apply across Search, Shopping, and YouTube Search inventory
• Shopping ads can still appear for excluded brands if the Shopping setting is enabled
• Brand exclusions and negative keywords serve different purposes inside PMax
• Search Terms Insights can help you identify branded traffic patterns
• Applying exclusions in stages makes performance changes easier to evaluate
• Campaign-level negative keywords now provide more control inside Performance Max
• Measuring non-brand performance helps you understand actual acquisition impact

If you want to improve traffic quality, reduce branded overlap, or get clearer reporting from your Google Ads campaigns, 9AM can help you manage and scale paid media with cleaner attribution and stronger performance visibility. 

Get in touch with us to audit your current Performance Max setup and identify opportunities to improve non-brand performance. 

FAQs

Can I exclude my own brand in Performance Max?

Yes. Many advertisers exclude their own brand in Performance Max when they already run a dedicated branded Search campaign. This helps separate branded and non-branded performance more clearly and gives you a better view of actual acquisition impact.

Do brand exclusions affect Shopping ads?

Yes, but only if you want them to. Google gives you a setting called “Allow Shopping ads on searches that mention excluded brands.” If this is enabled, Shopping ads can still appear for excluded brand searches.

How long do brand exclusions take to apply?

Brand exclusions usually start working shortly after being added, but you should wait around 7 to 14 days before evaluating performance changes properly. If you request a completely new brand entity from Google’s brand library, approval can take 4 to 6 weeks.

Are brand exclusions the same as negative keywords?

No. Brand exclusions block Google-recognized brand entities, while negative keywords block specific search terms or phrases. Brand exclusions are usually better for controlling branded traffic. Negative keywords work better for filtering unwanted queries or intent patterns.

Can I apply brand exclusions in bulk?

Yes. Google Ads allows you to apply brand exclusions across multiple campaigns using bulk edit settings. This is useful if you manage several Performance Max campaigns with separate branded and non-branded structures.

Can you exclude placements in Performance Max?

Yes. Google now supports account-level placement exclusions for Performance Max. This lets you block specific websites, apps, YouTube channels, and placements across eligible campaigns from one centralized exclusion list.

Can Performance Max still show branded traffic after exclusions?

Yes, sometimes. This can happen if Shopping ads are still allowed for excluded brands, the wrong brand entity was selected, or certain branded query variations are still slipping through. In those cases, campaign-level negative keywords can help tighten traffic control further.

Appendix

• https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/11189316
• https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14505308 
• https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/16756291
• https://blog.google/products/ads-commerce/new-performance-max-features-2025/
• https://searchengineland.com/google-ads-rolls-out-account-level-placement-exclusions-467569
• https://support.google.com/google-ads/answer/14505308

Traffic, ad spend, hook rates, video views, CTR, and conversion rates can show how your campaigns are performing. But they do not always show whether people remember your brand, prefer it, or recommend it.

Trust is one of the clearest signs of brand health. 

Edelman’s 2025 Brand Trust report found that 80% of people trust the brands they use, which shows how closely trust is tied to brand strength and customer behavior.

For performance marketing teams, this indicator is easy to miss. 

You may see strong creative performance in Meta Ads Manager, TikTok Ads Manager, or YouTube Ads, but still have weak brand recall, poor sentiment, or low purchase intent.

This is where brand health metrics help. 

Brand health metrics help you measure the deeper signals behind long-term growth. They show how your audience sees your brand across awareness, perception, consideration, loyalty, advocacy, and competitive visibility.

In this guide, we’ll cover:

• What brand health means and why it matters
• The key brand health metrics, formulas, and survey questions to use
• How to set benchmarks using historical, competitive, industry, and campaign data
• How to build a simple dashboard and turn the data into better marketing decisions

P.S.: If you want to connect brand health with paid media, creative performance, attribution, and customer data, 9AM’s marketing measurement frameworks can help you build a clearer view of what is working across channels. 

Brand Health Benchmarks: Strong Signals and Warning Signs 

You can use the table below as a practical starting point for reading each metric. It shows what to compare, what a healthy signal looks like, and what should raise concern.

What Is Brand Health?

Brand health is the overall strength of a brand in the market and in the minds of customers. It shows whether people know your brand, trust it, consider it, choose it over competitors, and recommend it to others.

A healthy brand usually has strong awareness, positive perception, clear differentiation, high consideration, and loyal customers.

This is why brand health should be checked regularly, the same way you would check any important part of your business. As Dave Foster, Forbes Councils Member, puts it: 

“Businesses should be as invested in their brand health as all of us should be in our personal health. Just as your annual wellness visit is an act of disease prevention, a brand health program is an investment in the future of your business.” (Dave Foster, “Assessing Brand Health: A Practical Checklist For B2B Marketers”)

What Brand Health Tells You

Brand health helps you understand where your brand is strong and where it may be losing ground.

It can show you:

• Recognition: Can people remember your brand name, logo, offer, or category connection when they see your content or ads? 
• Associations: Do they connect your brand with quality, expertise, value, speed, innovation, or any other attribute you want to own? 
• Competitive preference: Are people choosing your brand when they compare options, or are competitors still winning the final decision? 
• Customer loyalty: Do customers stay, buy again, leave positive reviews, refer others, or recommend your brand? 
• Long-term brand value: Are your campaigns creating stronger recall, trust, consideration, and loyalty over time, or are they only driving short-term clicks and conversions? 

Brand Health vs Brand Awareness vs Brand Equity

Brand awareness tells you whether people know your brand exists. Brand health shows how your brand is performing right now across trust, sentiment, consideration, preference, and loyalty. And brand equity looks at the long-term value your brand creates for the business.

All these are related, but they measure different parts of brand performance.

Why Measuring Brand Health Matters

Brand health helps you see what is happening underneath your campaign numbers. Sales, traffic, and conversion rates show current performance, but brand health shows whether your audience is becoming more aware, more trusting, and more likely to choose you repeatedly in the long run. 

1. Reveals Problems Before Revenue Drops

Revenue problems rarely appear out of nowhere. You usually see early warning signs first.

For example:

• Declining sentiment can signal future churn
• Falling awareness can reduce future pipeline
• Lower purchase intent can weaken future sales
• Negative reviews can damage trust before they affect conversion rates

This is why brand health matters for marketing teams. If sentiment drops or consideration slows down, you can fix the issue before it starts hurting acquisition, retention, or sales.

Customers can leave faster than teams expect. PwC found that 32% of customers would stop doing business with a brand they loved after one bad experience, which makes sentiment, satisfaction, reviews, and trust worth tracking early.

2. Helps Connect Brand Marketing to Business Outcomes

Brand marketing can feel hard to measure when you only look at short-term campaign data. Brand health metrics give you a clearer way to connect brand work with business decisions.

They can help you improve:

• Positioning
• Messaging
• Campaign strategy
• Customer experience
• Product development
• Competitive strategy

For example, if people know your brand but do not consider it, your messaging may need sharper proof points. If customers like your product but do not recommend it, you may need to improve trust, onboarding, or customer experience.

This makes brand health tracking useful because it connects paid media, customer feedback, search demand, and long-term brand signals in one view. 

3. Helps Teams Benchmark Progress

Brand health also gives you a clear baseline. Once you know where you stand, you can track whether your brand is getting stronger or weaker over time.

You can benchmark progress against:

• Your previous performance
• Your direct competitors
• Industry standards
• Campaign goals

Unfortunately, Nielsen’s 2025 Annual Marketing Report found that only 32% of global marketers measure media spend holistically across digital and traditional channels. 

So, you should evaluate all those dimensions to understand your brand health. Instead of asking whether your brand “feels stronger,” you can see what changed, where the gap is, and what needs attention next.

The Core Brand Health Metrics to Track

Before you build a brand health dashboard, you need to know which signals actually matter. 

Below, we analyzed brand health metrics that will help you measure how well your brand is known, trusted, considered, chosen, and recommended. 

1. Brand Awareness

Brand awareness measures how familiar your target audience is with your brand. It tells you whether people recognize your name, remember you in the right category, and connect your brand with the problem you solve.

If people are seeing your video ad, Meta campaigns, or Instagram feed content but still do not remember your brand later, you may have reach without real awareness.

Types of Brand Awareness

Brand awareness can show up in a few different ways, depending on how easily people remember or recognize your brand. 

• Unaided awareness: People can name your brand without seeing a prompt or list. 
• Aided awareness: People recognize your brand when they see it in a list of options. 
• Top-of-mind awareness: Your brand is the first one people mention when they think about your category. 

How to Measure Brand Awareness 

You can measure brand awareness through:

• Brand tracking surveys.
• Search volume for branded terms.
• Direct website traffic.
• Social mentions.
• Google Trends.
• Share of search.
• Brand lift studies after major campaigns 

Example Survey Questions

We suggest using questions like: 

• “Which brands come to mind when you think of [category]?”
• “Have you heard of [brand]?”
• “Which of these brands are you familiar with?”
• “Which brand would you name first in this category?”

Benchmark Guidance

Do not judge awareness in isolation. Compare it against:

• Your previous awareness score
• Competitor awareness
• Category leaders
• Brand lift before and after major campaigns
• Branded search growth over time

For example, if your ad spend and video views are increasing but unaided awareness stays flat, your campaigns may be getting attention without making the brand memorable. This is a sign to review your creative strategy, messaging, and brand cues.

2. Brand Recall

Brand recall measures whether people can remember your brand when they need a product or service in your category.

This is stronger than simple recognition. Someone may recognize your brand when they see it in a list, but recall shows whether your brand comes to mind without help.

How to Measure It

You can measure brand recall through: 

• Unaided recall surveys.
• Category association questions.
• Post-campaign recall studies.
• Search behavior around branded and category terms
• Follow-up surveys after Meta campaigns, YouTube Ads, or TikTok campaigns

For video-heavy campaigns, recall studies become even more useful. Google found that 94% of analyzed YouTube campaigns drove a significant lift in ad recall, with an average lift of 80%. 

So if you are running YouTube Ads, Meta campaigns, or TikTok campaigns, recall studies can show whether your video content is helping people remember your brand. 

Brand Recall Formula

For example, if 200 out of 1,000 survey respondents mention your brand without being reminded of it, your brand recall rate is 20%. 

Example Survey Questions

You can ask questions like:

• “Which brands come to mind when you need [product or service]?”
• “Which companies do you remember seeing ads from in this category?”
• “Which brand would you name first for [category]?”

When This Metric Matters Most

Brand recall is useful when you are: 

• Entering a new market
• Running a rebrand
• Educating buyers about a category
• Investing in brand campaigns
• Trying to stand out against competitors

If recall is low, your audience may be seeing your content but not remembering your brand. In such cases, you should review your messaging, brand cues, creative strategy, and campaign consistency. 

3. Brand Recognition

Brand recognition measures whether people can identify your brand when they see your name, logo, slogan, packaging, colors, or visual identity.

This is different from brand recall. Recall asks, “Can people remember you without help?” Recognition asks, “Do people know it is you when they see elements that define your identity?”

How to Measure It

You can measure brand recognition through:

• Aided survey questions
• Logo recognition tests
• Ad recall studies
• Visual identity testing
• Packaging or product image tests
• Creative testing across Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, YouTube Ads, and display campaigns

Example Survey Questions

You can ask questions like:

• “Which of the following brands have you seen before?”
• “Which logo do you recognize from this category?”
• “Have you seen this brand in an ad, store, search result, or social feed?”
• “Which brand does this packaging, slogan, or visual style belong to?”

Why it Matters

Brand recognition helps you understand whether your visual identity is strong enough to stand out. If people see your video ad, Reels placements, Instagram feed ads, or website content but cannot connect it back to your brand, your creative may be getting attention without building recognition.

This is a sign to review your logo placement, brand colors, product shots, on-screen prompts, and overall creative consistency.

4. Brand Sentiment

Brand sentiment measures whether people feel positively, negatively, or neutrally about your brand.

It helps you understand the emotional side of brand health. People may know your brand, but sentiment shows whether that awareness is connected to trust, frustration, excitement, doubt, or confidence.

For example, your Meta Ads or TikTok campaigns may drive strong video views and audience engagement, but if the comments, reviews, or support tickets are mostly negative, your brand health may still be at risk.

How to Measure It

You can measure brand sentiment through:

• Social listening
• Review analysis
• Customer feedback
• Support tickets
• Survey sentiment questions
• Media monitoring
• Comment analysis on Meta Ads, TikTok Ads, YouTube Ads, and organic posts

Brand Sentiment Formula

For example, if you have 800 positive mentions, 120 negative mentions, and 1,000 total mentions, your brand sentiment score is 68%. 

How to interpret brand sentiment 

• Positive sentiment: People trust, like, or feel confident about your brand
• Neutral sentiment: People know your brand, but the emotional connection may be weak
• Negative sentiment: Reputation, product, pricing, service, or messaging issues may be affecting how people see your brand

Example Survey Questions

You can ask questions like:

• “How would you describe your overall feeling toward [brand]?”
• “Do you feel positive, neutral, or negative about [brand]?”
• “What is the main reason for your opinion of [brand]?”
• “How has your perception of [brand] changed recently?”

If sentiment starts dropping, we suggest looking at the themes behind it. Are people complaining about pricing, product quality, customer support, delivery, ad frequency, or unclear messaging? The score gives you the signal, but the comments tell you what to fix.

5. Share of Voice

Share of voice measures how visible your brand is compared with competitors. It shows how much of the category conversation, search visibility, media attention, or ad visibility your brand owns.

For example, if your competitors are showing up more in social conversations, PR mentions, search results, or paid placements, your share of voice may be lower even if your own campaigns are performing well.

Share of Voice Formula

The input can change depending on the channel you are measuring. For example, you might calculate share of voice using social mentions, media mentions, paid impressions, organic search visibility, or review platform visibility. 

Types of Share of Voice

You can track share of voice across:

• Organic search share of voice
• Paid search impression share
• Social media share of voice
• PR and media share of voice
• Review platform visibility
• AI search or share of model mentions, if relevant

Benchmark Guidance

Compare your share of voice against:

• Direct competitors
• Market share
• Previous quarter
• Campaign periods
• Product launch windows

Insider tip: A higher share of voice is not always a win on its own. A spike can come from a strong campaign, but it can also come from negative press, customer complaints, or a product issue.

This is why we always pair share of voice with sentiment. If visibility is rising and sentiment is positive, your brand is gaining healthy attention. If visibility is rising and sentiment is negative, you need to investigate what is driving the conversation.

6. Share of Search

Share of search measures how often people search for your brand compared with competitors in the same category.

It is a useful brand health signal because search behavior shows active interest. If more people are typing your brand name into Google, it usually means your brand is becoming more memorable, trusted, or relevant to the market.

How to Measure It

You can measure share of search through:

• Google Trends
• Google Search Console
• SEO platforms
• Branded keyword volume
• Competitor branded search comparison
• Search demand before and after campaigns

Share of Search Formula

For example, if your brand gets 10,000 branded searches in a month and the total branded search volume across your competitor set is 50,000, your share of search is 20%. 

Why It Matters

Share of search can help you understand whether your marketing is creating real brand demand.

It can show you:

• Whether more people are actively looking for your brand
• Whether your brand demand is growing faster than competitors
• Whether Meta campaigns, YouTube Ads, TikTok campaigns, or PR activity are increasing search interest
• Whether your user acquisition is coming from brand demand or mainly from paid media
• Whether your brand is gaining stronger category visibility over time

If your ad spend, video views, and CTR are rising but share of search is flat, your campaigns may be driving clicks without building deeper brand interest. That is a good time to review your creative strategy, audience targeting, and messaging.

7. Brand Consideration

Brand consideration measures whether people would seriously think about buying from your brand.

This is where awareness starts turning into something more meaningful. People may know your brand exists, but consideration shows whether they see you as a real option when they are comparing choices.

In fact, McKinsey’s consumer decision journey research found that brands in the initial consideration set can be up to three times more likely to be purchased than brands outside it. The research was based on purchase decisions from almost 20,000 consumers across five industries and three continents.

This shows that consideration is such an important brand health metric. If people recognize your brand but do not shortlist it, your awareness is not turning into buying interest yet.

How to Measure It

You can measure brand consideration through:

• Surveys
• CRM pipeline data
• Product page engagement
• Trial or demo requests
• Wishlist or cart behavior
• Comparison page traffic
• High-intent branded search behavior

Example Survey Questions

You can ask questions like:

• “Which of these brands would you consider buying from?”
• “Would you consider [brand] the next time you need [product or service]?”
• “Which brands would make your shortlist?”
• “What would make you more likely to consider [brand]?”

Benchmark Guidance

Track brand consideration by audience segment, such as:

• Existing customers
• Prospects
• Category buyers
• Competitor customers
• High-intent website visitors
• Target accounts or buying committees

If awareness is high but consideration is low, people may recognize your brand without seeing enough reason to choose it. This usually points to gaps in positioning, proof points, pricing, reviews, or competitive differentiation.

8. Purchase Intent

Purchase intent measures how likely people are to buy from your brand within a specific time frame.

It goes one step beyond consideration. Consideration tells you whether someone would shortlist your brand. Purchase intent tells you whether they are close to taking action.

For example, someone may consider your brand after seeing a video ad, reading reviews, or comparing options. But purchase intent shows whether that interest is strong enough to turn into a signup, request of any kind, free download and more, as you can see below.

How to Measure It

You can measure purchase intent through:

• Survey questions
• Trial signups
• Demo requests
• Cart additions
• Quote requests
• Product comparison behavior
• High-intent website actions
• Branded search behavior after campaigns

Example Survey Question

You can ask:

“How likely are you to purchase from [brand] in the next 3 months?”

Suggested Scale

Use a simple scale like:

• Very unlikely
• Unlikely
• Neutral
• Likely
• Very likely

Why it Matters

Purchase intent helps you see whether your marketing is creating real buying interest.

If your Meta Ads, TikTok Ads Manager data, or YouTube Ads show strong video views, hook rates, and audience engagement, but purchase intent stays low, your creative may be getting attention without moving people closer to buying.

This is a sign to review your offer, proof points, pricing, landing page, creative testing framework, and audience targeting.

9. Brand Preference

Brand preference measures whether people choose your brand over the alternatives they know and consider.

This is where brand health gets measured on a more competitive dimension. Someone may be aware of your brand and even consider it, but preference shows whether they would pick you when other options are available.

How to Measure It

You can measure brand preference through:

• Competitive preference surveys
• Win/loss analysis
• Customer interviews
• Review comparisons
• Market research panels
• Sales call feedback
• Competitor comparison page behavior

Example Survey Questions

You can ask questions like:

• “If all options were available at a similar price, which brand would you choose?”
• “Which brand would be your first choice in this category?”
• “Why would you choose that brand over the others?”
• “What would make you choose [brand] instead?”

Why It Matters

Preference is stronger than awareness because it shows whether people see a clear reason to choose you.

It can help you understand:

• Whether your brand has meaningful differentiation
• Whether customers see enough value to choose you over competitors
• Whether your pricing feels justified
• Whether your brand has loyalty potential

If consideration is high but preference is low, buyers may be comparing you but choosing someone else. In our experience, this usually points to gaps in positioning, proof points, customer reviews, social proof, or competitive messaging. 

10. Net Promoter Score

Net promoter score, or NPS, measures customer loyalty and how likely people are to recommend your brand.

It is useful because a recommendation is a strong signal of brand health. If customers are willing to refer you to a friend, colleague, or another buyer, they likely trust your brand enough to put their own name behind it.

How to Measure It

Ask customers one simple question:

“How likely are you to recommend [brand] to a friend or colleague?”

Bain’s Net Promoter System scores this on a 0 to 10 scale and groups responses into promoters, passives, and detractors. 

• Promoters score 9 to 10
• Passives score 7 to 8, and 
• Detractors score 0 to 6

NPS Formula

For example, if 60% of respondents are promoters and 20% are detractors, your NPS is 40. 

Benchmark Guidance

Use NPS benchmarks carefully because scores vary by industry, survey timing, sample size, and customer expectations.

As a general guide:

• Above 0 means you have more promoters than detractors
• Above 20 is generally favorable
• Above 50 is commonly treated as excellent
• Above 80 is very strong, but rare and highly dependent on category

Insider tip: Do not rely only on NPS. Pair it with open-ended feedback: “What is the main reason for your score?” The score will show you how loyal customers feel. Whereas the follow-up answer will show why they feel that way and what you need to improve. 

11. Customer Satisfaction Score

Customer satisfaction score, or CSAT, measures how satisfied customers are with a specific interaction, product, service, or overall experience.

It is different from NPS. NPS measures whether someone would recommend your brand. CSAT measures how happy they were with a particular moment, such as a support call, onboarding flow, purchase experience, or renewal process.

How to Measure It

Ask customers a simple satisfaction question after a key interaction, such as:

“How satisfied were you with your experience?”

You can use a scale like:

• Very dissatisfied
• Dissatisfied
• Neutral
• Satisfied
• Very satisfied

Salesforce explains CSAT as the percentage of respondents who rate themselves as satisfied or very satisfied. For example, if 80 out of 100 respondents choose satisfied or very satisfied, your CSAT score is 80%.

CSAT Formula

For example, if 340 out of 400 respondents say they were satisfied, your CSAT score is 85%. 

Benchmark Guidance

A CSAT score around 70% to 85% is generally considered good, but the right benchmark depends on your industry, sample size, survey method, and customer expectations.

We suggest tracking CSAT by touchpoint instead of looking only at one overall score. A brand may have strong product satisfaction but weak support satisfaction, or strong onboarding satisfaction but poor renewal satisfaction.

Best Use Cases

CSAT is most useful for measuring:

• Customer support experience
• Product onboarding
• Purchase experience
• Renewal process
• Post-service feedback

If CSAT drops after a specific touchpoint, look at the comments, support tickets, and customer feedback around that moment. The score tells you where satisfaction is slipping. The feedback tells you why.

12. Customer Loyalty and Retention

Customer loyalty and retention measure whether customers keep buying from your brand after the first purchase.

This is one of the clearest signs of brand health. If people come back, renew, upgrade, refer others, or stay engaged over time, your brand promise is likely matching the customer experience.

Metrics to Include

You can track loyalty and retention through:

• Repeat purchase rate
• Retention rate
• Churn rate
• Customer lifetime value
• Renewal rate
• Subscription expansion
• Loyalty program engagement
• Referral activity
• Review and testimonial volume

Why It Belongs in Brand Health

Strong brands make customers want to stay. Retention can show whether your product, service, pricing, support, and messaging are aligned with what customers expected when they first bought from you.

For example, if your user acquisition is strong but churn is rising, your campaigns may be bringing in customers who are not staying. This is a signal to review your onboarding, customer support, product experience, and post-purchase communication.

What to Watch for

Look for patterns like:

• High repeat purchase rate with low referral activity
• Strong retention but weak customer lifetime value
• High churn after onboarding
• Low renewal rate after price changes
• Loyalty program engagement dropping over time

When loyalty is weak, we usually look at the gap between what the brand promised and what the customer experienced. This gap is where retention problems usually start.

13. Brand Trust

Brand trust measures whether people believe your brand is credible, reliable, and safe to buy from.

This matters because trust affects almost every part of brand health. If people trust your brand, they are more likely to consider you, choose you, stay with you, and recommend you. If trust is weak, even strong awareness or high traffic may not turn into sales.

In fact, a PwC survey found that 40% of consumers stopped buying from a company because they did not trust it. This makes trust a brand health metric worth tracking before weak trust starts showing up as lower conversion rates and retention, or fewer repeat purchases. 

How to Measure It

You can measure brand trust through:

• Trust surveys
• Review ratings
• Complaint volume
• Customer interviews
• Third-party reputation platforms
• Media sentiment
• Social comments and customer feedback
• Support ticket themes

Example Survey Questions

You can ask questions like:

• “I trust [brand] to deliver on its promises.”
• “I believe [brand] is transparent and reliable.”
• “I feel confident buying from [brand].”
• “I believe [brand] handles customer issues fairly.”
• “I would feel comfortable recommending [brand] to someone else.”

What to Watch For

Trust can weaken for many reasons, such as unclear pricing, poor customer support, product quality issues, negative reviews, or inconsistent messaging.

If trust scores are low, look at the language people use in reviews, support tickets, sales calls, and social comments. 

We usually look for repeated phrases like “not clear,” “hard to reach,” “poor quality,” “misleading,” or “didn’t match expectations.” These patterns can show you where the trust gap is coming from.

14. Brand Associations

Brand associations measure the words, ideas, emotions, and attributes people connect with your brand.

This helps you see whether your positioning is landing the way you intended. You may want people to see your brand as premium, reliable, innovative, affordable, expert-led, or easy to use. Brand association research shows whether those ideas are actually showing up in the market.

How to Measure It

You can measure brand associations through:

• Open-ended survey questions
• Word association tests
• Social listening
• Review mining
• Customer interviews
• Focus groups
• Sales call feedback
• Comment analysis across social and ad platforms

Example Survey Questions

You can ask questions like:

• “What three words come to mind when you think of [brand]?”
• “What do you associate most with [brand]?”
• “How would you describe [brand] to someone else?”
• “Which of these words best describes [brand]?”

What to Use this Metric for

Brand associations can help you evaluate:

• Positioning
• Messaging
• Category fit
• Differentiation
• Reputation
• Emotional connection

If people describe your brand in a way that does not match your intended positioning, your messaging may need work. We recommend looking at the repeated words first because they show which ideas your audience has already attached to the brand.

15. Brand Equity

Brand equity measures the total value your brand adds beyond the product or service itself.

It shows how much strength your brand has built over time. When brand equity is strong, people may choose you even when competitors offer similar features, lower prices, or faster promotions. They trust the name, the experience, and the promise behind the brand.

Indicators of Brand Equity

You can look at signals like:

• Price premium
• Customer loyalty
• Market share
• Brand preference
• Perceived quality
• Advocacy
• Lower acquisition cost
• Higher customer lifetime value

How to Measure It

You can measure brand equity through:

• Brand valuation studies
• Pricing power analysis
• Preference studies
• Customer lifetime value
• Market share trends
• Competitive win rates
• Repeat purchase or renewal behavior
• Referral and advocacy data

Why it Matters

Brand equity helps you understand whether your brand is creating business value over time.

For example, if customers are willing to pay more for your product, renew without heavy discounting, recommend you to others, or choose you over cheaper alternatives, your brand is doing more than driving awareness. It is adding measurable value to the business.

If your brand equity is weak, we suggest looking at pricing power, customer loyalty, perceived quality, and preference first. These areas can show whether the brand has enough trust and differentiation to support long-term growth.

How to Act on Brand Health Data

Once you know which metric is weak, the next step is to connect that signal to other metrics and a clear action. Use this quick guide to decide what to review first:

Brand Health Benchmarks: What Good Looks Like

There is no single “good” brand health score that works for every business. A strong benchmark depends on your market, audience, category, and how you collect the data.

Benchmarks can vary based on:

• Industry
• Market maturity
• Brand size
• Geography
• Audience type
• Survey methodology
• Marketing channel
• Competitor set

This is why your benchmarks should give context, not fixed rules. For example, a 30% awareness score may be strong for a new B2B brand entering a niche market, but weak for a well-known consumer brand in a mature category.

That said, here are some stats you may find interesting:

Brand Awareness Benchmarks

• Unaided (spontaneous) recall: Established brands typically see unaided recall rates of 20–30%; newer brands fall in the 5–15% range, according to Umbrex.
• Aided recognition: Established brands typically land between 60–80% recognition when prompted with a logo or name; newer brands are closer to 30–50%. Unaided awareness above 50% is considered good; above 70% indicates excellent brand recognition and strong market presence, also according to Umbrex.
• Ad-driven awareness lift: Unaided awareness is the hardest brand metric to move; a typical ad campaign delivers just a 0.30-point lift. Mid-funnel metrics like favorability and purchase intent are bigger movers, with brand favorability shifting about 3 points after a typical campaign, as per Disqo.

Share of Voice Benchmarks

• Market leadership target: According to Intently, the average SOV for the leading brand across major industries was 28%, with the top three brands collectively capturing about 65% of all mentions.
• Industry SOV ranges: Travel industry SOV for leading brands ranges from 25–40%; healthcare brands typically fall between 15–30%; food and beverage brands average 10–20%, as per another Umbrex article.
• CPG leaders: Leading CPG companies frequently achieve 25–30% SOV to establish category dominance; for e-commerce stores, even 10% represents significant visibility against competitors, says Opensend.

Net Promoter Score Benchmarks

• Cross-industry B2C range: Average NPS scores for B2C industries range from 26 to 68; for B2B industries, the range is 41 to 68, as per Retently. 
• Global scale: A score of 50 is classified as excellent; 70+ is considered world-class, according to ClearlyRated. 
• Selected industry averages (SurveySensum, 2024): Insurance: ~80; Retail: ~64; E-commerce: ~52; Healthcare: ~46; SaaS/Software: ~40; Communications: ~30; Internet software & services: ~16. 
• Regional context: According to Merren, North American (U.S. & Canada) averages run slightly lower at 35–40 due to higher consumer expectations; European averages sit around 25–35, partly influenced by cultural skepticism and stricter data privacy norms. 

Customer Satisfaction Score Benchmarks

• Cross-industry average: According to Sobot, the average CSAT score across all industries is 78%. 
• General thresholds: 75–85% is broadly considered a "good" score; above 90% puts a brand in the top 5% of companies, as per Armatis. 
• By industry (ACSI / Retently data): SurveySparrow notes that healthcare averages around 80% (ACSI 2024–2025); SaaS targets 78–80%; retail ~76%; ISPs lag at 68%. 
• Social media: According to Fullview, Social media platforms register some of the lowest customer satisfaction scores, averaging only 73. 

The Best Types of Brand Health Benchmarks

To get a clearer view, our team at 9AM compares brand health metrics from a few different angles. 

Internal Benchmarks

Internal benchmarks compare your current performance against your own past performance.

They help you answer questions like:

• Is awareness improving quarter over quarter?
• Is sentiment getting stronger after product updates?
• Is NPS moving up or down after onboarding changes?
• Is branded search growing after a campaign?

This is usually the best starting point because it shows whether your brand is improving over time.

Competitive Benchmarks

Competitive benchmarks compare your brand against direct competitors.

They help you see whether you are gaining or losing ground in the market. For example, your awareness may be growing, but if competitor awareness is growing faster, you may still be falling behind.

Use competitive benchmarks for:

• Positioning
• Share of voice
• Share of search
• Brand preference
• Market visibility
• Win/loss analysis

Industry Benchmarks

Industry benchmarks compare your performance against category norms.

These are useful for executive reporting and goal setting, but they need context. Survey methods, audience quality, sample size, and region can change the meaning of the numbers.

For example, NPS, CSAT, retention, and purchase intent can look very different across SaaS, ecommerce, healthcare, finance, and consumer brands.

Campaign Benchmarks

Campaign benchmarks compare brand health before and after a specific campaign.

They help you see whether a campaign improved awareness, recall, consideration, sentiment, or purchase intent.

For example, after running Meta campaigns, YouTube Ads, TikTok campaigns, or a larger performance marketing push, you can compare:

• Brand awareness before and after the campaign
• Ad recall after exposure
• Branded search lift
• Purchase intent among exposed audiences
• Sentiment changes during the campaign period

How Often Should You Measure Brand Health? 

Most brands should measure brand health quarterly, while tracking faster-moving signals like sentiment, reviews, share of voice, branded search, and direct traffic monthly. A full brand health audit can be done once or twice a year.

The right cadence depends on the metric. Some signals change quickly, while others need more time to show meaningful movement. 

For most marketing teams, a quarterly brand health survey paired with monthly search, sentiment, and visibility tracking gives a practical rhythm.

You do not need to measure every metric every week. Start with the signals that match your current goals. If awareness is the priority, watch recall, share of search, and branded traffic. And if retention is the priority, focus on NPS, CSAT, churn, reviews, and customer feedback.

The goal is simple: measure fast-moving signals frequently, and review deeper brand perception metrics on a longer cycle. 

Brand Health Metrics by Business Type

The right brand health metrics depend on how your business sells, how long the buying cycle is, and what customer behavior matters most. A B2B software company, an e-commerce brand, and a consumer brand will not read brand health the same way.

You can use the sections below to choose the metrics that match your business model.

B2B Brand Health Metrics

For B2B brands, brand health is closely tied to trust, recall, and whether the right accounts see you as a credible option.

Track:

• Brand recall among target accounts
• Consideration among buying committees
• Share of search
• Analyst and review site sentiment
• Pipeline influence
• Win rate
• Customer advocacy
• Referral quality
• Sales conversation themes

These metrics matter because B2B buyers usually compare several vendors before making a decision. If your brand is known but does not make the shortlist, you may need stronger positioning, clearer proof points, or better category visibility.

SaaS brand health metrics

For SaaS brands, brand health connects closely with product experience, retention, and customer trust.

Track:

• NPS
• Product sentiment
• Churn
• Expansion revenue
• Review ratings
• Community engagement
• Branded search
• Customer onboarding feedback
• Feature-level feedback

If branded search is rising but churn is also rising, your demand may be growing faster than customer satisfaction. This is a sign to review onboarding, product expectations, support, and post-sale communication.

E-commerce Brand Health Metrics

For e-commerce brands, brand health shows whether customers trust you enough to buy, return, and recommend.

Track:

• Repeat purchase rate
• Review sentiment
• Social reach
• Direct traffic
• Branded search
• Customer lifetime value
• Referral rate
• Cart behavior
• Post-purchase feedback

If your video ad performance, hook rates, and CTR look strong but repeat purchase is low, your campaigns may be attracting buyers who do not stay. We usually look at product quality, delivery experience, reviews, and post-purchase messaging first.

Consumer Brand Health Metrics

For consumer brands, brand health depends on awareness, emotion, visibility, and preference.

Track:

• Awareness
• Recall
• Preference
• Purchase intent
• Share of voice
• Sentiment
• Loyalty
• Brand associations
• Social proof

Consumer buyers may move faster than B2B buyers, so signals like recognition, sentiment, reviews, and purchase intent can tell you a lot about how your brand is performing in the market.

Turn Brand Health Insights into Growth with 9AM 

Brand health is strongest when you measure it as a complete picture instead of a single score. Start with the metrics that match your current goals, set clear benchmarks, track changes over time, and use the data to improve your messaging, customer experience, creative strategy, and long-term growth.

Key takeaways

• Brand health shows whether people know, trust, consider, choose, and recommend your brand.
• Sales, traffic, video views, and conversion rates do not show the full picture of brand strength.
• Awareness, recall, and recognition help you measure how memorable your brand is.
• Sentiment, trust, and associations show how people feel about your brand.
• Share of voice and share of search help you compare brand visibility against competitors.
• Consideration, preference, and purchase intent show whether awareness is turning into buying interest.
• NPS, CSAT, loyalty, and retention reveal whether customers are satisfied enough to stay and recommend you.
• Strong benchmarks should combine historical, competitive, industry, and campaign data.

If you are looking to connect brand health with creative performance and customer data, 9AM can help you build a clearer measurement framework. As a performance marketing agency in New York, we help brands turn marketing data into sharper decisions across campaigns, channels, and growth strategy.

Book a strategy call with us to see where your brand health and performance data can work better together. 

FAQs

What are brand health metrics?

Brand health metrics show how well your brand is known, trusted, considered, preferred, and recommended by your target audience. Common metrics include awareness, recall, sentiment, share of voice, share of search, consideration, preference, NPS, CSAT, retention, and brand trust. 

What is the most important brand health metric?

There is no single best brand health metric. If you are building visibility, track awareness, recall, and share of search. If people know you but are not buying, track consideration, preference, purchase intent, and trust. And if you want to measure customer strength, track NPS, CSAT, retention, churn, and referrals. 

How to measure brand awareness?

You can measure brand awareness through aided awareness surveys, unaided recall surveys, top-of-mind awareness questions, branded search volume, direct website traffic, social mentions, and share of search. A simple question to ask is: “Which brands come to mind when you think of [category]?” 

How to measure brand sentiment?

You can measure brand sentiment by reviewing social mentions, customer reviews, survey responses, support tickets, media coverage, and comments on ads or organic posts. Classify mentions as positive, neutral, or negative, then look at the repeated themes behind the score, such as pricing, support, product quality, delivery, or messaging. 

What is the difference between brand health and brand tracking?

Brand health is the current condition of your brand. It shows whether people know, trust, consider, choose, and recommend you. Brand tracking is the ongoing process of measuring those signals over time through surveys, search data, social listening, reviews, CRM data, and customer feedback. 

How can 9AM help measure brand health?

At 9AM, we help brands move from scattered reports to a clearer brand health measurement setup. We define the right metrics, organize data from different channels, build dashboards, and turn the findings into practical marketing decisions. 

Appendix

• https://www.edelman.com/trust/2025/trust-barometer/special-report-brands
• https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesagencycouncil/2025/09/03/assessing-brand-health-a-practical-checklist-for-b2b-marketers/
• https://www.pwc.com/ng/en/assets/pdf/experience-is-everything.pdf
• https://www.nielsen.com/news-center/2025/nielsen-releases-its-2025-annual-marketing-report-looking-at-the-power-of-data-driven-marketing/
• https://agency.googleblog.com/2015/03/measuring-impact-of-youtube-ads-on.html
• https://brandstrat.co/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/The-Consumer-Decision-Journey.pdf.pdf
• https://www.netpromotersystem.com/about/measuring-your-net-promoter-score/
• https://www.surveymonkey.com/learn/customer-feedback/what-is-good-csat-score/
• https://www.pwc.com/us/en/library/trust-in-business-survey/customer-trust-in-your-sector.html
• https://umbrex.com/resources/ultimate-guide-to-company-analysis/ultimate-guide-to-marketing-analysis/brand-awareness-analysis/ 
• https://resources.disqo.com/industry-level-differences-in-brand-lift-and-outcomes-lift 
• https://intently.ai/blog/calculating-share-of-voice 
• https://umbrex.com/resources/ultimate-guide-to-company-analysis/ultimate-guide-to-marketing-analysis/share-of-voice-analysis/ 
• https://www.opensend.com/post/social-share-of-voice-sov-statistics-ecommerce 
• https://www.retently.com/blog/good-net-promoter-score/ 
• https://www.clearlyrated.ai/industry-benchmark/nps-benchmarks-for-the-it-services-industry 
• https://www.surveysensum.com/blog/nps-score-by-industry 
• https://merren.io/what-is-a-good-net-promoter-score-2/ 
• https://www.sobot.io/article/csat-survey-benchmarks-top-industries-2025-comparison/ 
• https://www.armatis.com/en/2026/01/16/what-is-a-good-csat-score-discover-your-industry-benchmarks/ 
• https://surveysparrow.com/blog/csat-benchmarks/ 
• https://www.fullview.io/blog/csat-benchmarks-by-industry 

Every campaign, landing page, creator partnership, and paid ad in e-commerce marketing eventually leads back to one thing: store performance. 

That difference is extra obvious in New York. According to Apidots, about 78% of consumers here shop online at least once a week, which makes competition for attention almost nonstop. 

Standing out in NYC takes more than good products, strong brand identities, or eye-catching ads. That is why many high-selling brands work with specialized ecommerce marketing agencies that understand the pressure.

Still, how do you find the right one when NYC is packed with firms claiming to have that expertise? 

That’s where we come in.

We reviewed a large part of the New York market to shortlist the best partners for DTC, marketplace, and modern retail brands.

Let’s find your match!

Looking for a team focused specifically on paid media? Check out our roundup of the Best Agencies for Scaling Paid Social in New York. 

Why Ecommerce Brands Need Specialized Marketing Agencies in New York

Before jumping into the top agencies, let’s see why so many ecommerce brands in New York rely on outside partners with deeper platform experience in the first place. 

NYC Networks That Speed Up Creative, Talent, and Distribution

New York runs on relationships. Available creators, production crews who can shoot tomorrow, stylists who know everything about category standards, and media partners who know what inventory performs. 

Specialized NYC agencies are inside those circles every day, so brands skip the long “who do we trust?” phase. This shows up in distribution, too. 

The right agency can plug a brand into local collabs, pop-ups, brand events, and creator communities that match the product and price point. 

And in a city where ecommerce adoption is approximately 15% higher than the national average, that offline-to-online flywheel becomes even more powerful.

Local Rules and Compliance Experience That Protects Revenue

New York comes with tighter expectations around claims, disclosures, consumer protection, and subscription-style selling. Ecommerce brands feel it through creator contracts, ad copy, refund flows, and recurring billing terms. 

That scrutiny is not theoretical: New York regulators secured $2.6 million from Fareportal after alleging the company used misleading scarcity messages to pressure online purchases. 

That kind of case shows how easily a conversion tactic can turn into a compliance issue when the wording, timing, or disclosure is off. In this environment, a specialized agency brings pattern recognition from running campaigns under these conditions across multiple categories.

That becomes especially important for wellness, beauty, food, and any product with sensitive claims.

Multicultural Audience Adaptation That Keeps Conversion Rates Healthy

After the legal side, the next reality of NYC is audience complexity. One city, hundreds of micro-markets. Creative that resonates in one neighborhood or demographic can miss completely in another, even within the same product category.

In fact, inclusive campaigns can increase consumer preference by 62%, especially in diverse urban markets like New York.

Local agencies use customer research to build messaging frameworks for mixed audiences: creator casting, visuals, tone, offer structure, and landing page language that fit different segments without turning the brand voice into a mess. 

This approach tends to lift performance because it respects how people shop here. 

Faster Response to Market Shifts and Consumer Trends

Once a product starts gaining traction in New York, competitors react fast. New ads appear within days, creators copy formats, pricing changes spread quickly, and customer attention shifts almost weekly.

Moreover, recent ad performance data shows creative fatigue can reduce click-through rates by up to 35%, forcing ecommerce brands to refresh campaigns constantly to maintain efficiency.

Specialized ecommerce agencies already build their entire workflow around rapid adaptation. 

They test new creative constantly, refresh paid campaigns aggressively, monitor audience fatigue early, and adjust offers before performance drops too far. 

That level of momentum becomes extremely difficult to maintain with an internal team alone.

How We Ranked NYC’s Top Ecommerce Marketing Agencies

In 2026, “good marketing” is meaningless if it doesn’t translate into profitable revenue. 

So we ranked agencies based on one core question: can they drive measurable ecommerce growth in a market as competitive as New York? 

We prioritized real case studies with numbers attached, platform depth (especially Shopify and paid media ecosystems), creative execution quality, and the ability to scale without breaking profitability. 

Flashy branding didn’t matter. Proof did.

Disclaimer: Yes, we included 9AM in this list. We focus exclusively on ecommerce performance and believe our results justify the placement. That said, this guide is meant to help brands find the right fit, not to claim there’s only one.

Breaking Down NYC’s Best Ecommerce Marketing Agencies

Now, let’s get into the agencies themselves and see which NYC teams actually stand out for ecommerce growth. 

1. 9AM

Headquarters: 90 Broad St, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10004, United States.

Rating: 4.9/5 G2.

9AM is the kind of ecommerce marketing agency brands come to when standard ad management stops delivering real scale. We manage more than $250M in ad spend across 120+ ecommerce brands, with a focus on paid social, creative strategy, analytics, and full-funnel optimization. 

Every campaign is crafted around profitable revenue, backed by data, testing, and constant refinement. And, we don't focus only on media buying. Our team builds complete ecommerce systems through attribution modeling, shopping feed optimization, retargeting automation, creative testing, and LTV-based bidding. 

One of the strongest examples is EVRY Jewels, which we helped scale from $6M to more than $100M in yearly revenue while keeping profitability in focus.

Featured clients: EVRY Jewels, Miro, Hurom, Prose, Hopper, Mindbloom.

Core Services:

• Shopping campaign management
• Product feed optimization
• Performance Max setup
• Social commerce campaigns
• Product videos
• Dynamic product ads
• Email automation
• Loyalty & subscription strategy

2. Socialfly NY

Headquarters: 231 West 29th St - Suite 702, New York, NY 10001.

Rating: 4.5 Clutch.

Socialfly takes a very social-first approach to ecommerce marketing, making them a good fit for brands that want more personality in their campaigns. The team works across SEO (Search They also have a lot of experience in influencer campaigns and community-driven content.

Socialfly knows how to turn engagement into real attention around a product launch. 

For Whisps, the agency promoted two new flavors through playful creative, giveaways, GIPHY stickers, community management, and a custom AR filter designed for cheese snack fans. The campaign sparked conversations across different audiences, from celebrities to keto-focused moms, while expanding the brand’s reach through highly shareable content.

Featured clients: Mediacom, SlimFast, Weleda, Luckin Coffee.

Core Services:

• Ecommerce paid media campaigns
• Shopify marketing
• Content creation
• Social commerce strategy
• Influencer marketing
• Paid social advertising
• Digital marketing strategies

3. NANO

Headquarters: 222 W 37th St, Floor 6, New York, NY 10018.

Rating: 4.5 Google.

Nano Web Group brings a good mix of ecommerce tech knowledge and marketing that connects to revenue. With more than 18 years in business and experience supporting over 250 brands and organizations, the agency has a strong feel for what online stores need behind the scenes and in front of customers. 

Their work covers SEO, Meta advertising, Google Shopping, creative ad design, and conversion-focused campaign strategy. On top of that, Nano Web Group works closely with Shopify and Magento stores, which gives it a useful edge for ecommerce brands with more technical needs.

Featured clients: Anna Zuckerman, Gemlok Jewelry, The William Vale.

Core Services:

• Ecommerce SEO
• Meta advertising
• Media buying
• Social media marketing
• Shopify marketing solutions
• Magento ecommerce support
• UX design

4. Barrel

Headquarters: 6 W 18th, 12th floor. New York, NY 10011.

Rating: 4.0 DesignRush.

Barrel has built a clear reputation as a Shopify-focused ecommerce agency. As a Shopify Plus Partner since 2017,  they work across DTC, retail, subscriptions, POS, marketplaces, and retention, especially for food, beverage, beauty, and wellness brands. 

For example, during Sweet Loren’s migration from WooCommerce to Shopify, Barrel rebuilt the entire experience around retention, recipe-driven engagement, and smarter product discovery. As a result, the new setup supported deeper customer interaction while aligning content, commerce, and brand storytelling in one streamlined structure.

Featured clients: McCormick, Sweet Loren’s, Once Upon a Farm, Cabot Creamery.

Core Services:

• Shopify Plus ecommerce development
• Ecommerce website design
• Shopify migration services
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• Email & SMS retention marketing
• UX/UI optimization
• Lifecycle marketing

5. BlueSwitch

Headquarters: 29 Broadway - Ground Floor, New York, NY 10006.

Rating: 4.5 Birdeye.

BlueSwitch is a Shopify Platinum Partner, perfect for ecommerce brands that are dealing with complex storefronts, outdated systems, and serious scaling demands. 

The agency focuses on large-scale B2B and DTC transformation, offering Shopify architecture, custom integrations, performance marketing, SEO, email and SMS, and long-term post-launch support.

For Rapiscan, BlueSwitch developed a global B2B ecommerce system serving 170+ countries, supporting 250+ consumables, replacement parts, and accessories, and rolling out to 200+ countries within a single year. The brand gained a centralized platform capable of handling international complexity at scale.

Featured clients: L’Oréal, Panasonic, Perry Ellis, Ted Baker London.

Core Services:

• Shopify Plus development
• Ecommerce website design
• Shopify migration & replatforming
• Conversion-focused UX/UI design
• Ecommerce SEO
• Personalized advertising
• Paid search & paid social advertising

6. Avex Designs

Headquarters: 379 W Broadway, New York, NY 10012.

Rating: 5.0 Clutch.

Avex Designs covers the full Shopify Plus stack, including design, development, platform migrations, CRO, retention, and omnichannel commerce. Their real signature is the balance between high-end brand visuals and conversion-minded Shopify architecture, so the site feels premium while still staying focused on selling. 

For KITH, Avex fully redesigned the Shopify Plus storefront and mobile experience with UX refinement, navigation optimization, and conversion-driven ecommerce architecture. Meanwhile, they rebuilt the browsing flow across desktop and mobile, making product discovery faster and cleaner while keeping KITH’s premium streetwear vibe intact. 

According to Avex, the redesign led to a 235% increase in conversions through stronger navigation, improved content structure, and a smoother shopping experience.

Featured clients: KITH, AriZona, quip, O’Neill.

Core Services:

• Shopify theme development
• Ecommerce web design & development
• Shopify migration & replatforming
• UX/UI design
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• Ecommerce strategy

7. Roswell NYC

Headquarters: 139 Fulton St, New York, NY 10038 

Rating: 4.9 Clutch

Roswell NYC is a Webby Award-winning, full-service Shopify ecommerce agency, perfect for mid-market and enterprise DTC and B2B brands. As a Shopify Platinum Partner and Klaviyo Platinum Partner, their team of 40+ specialists spans strategy, UX and UI design, custom development, performance marketing, email and SMS, CRO, and SEO, all under one roof.

Roswell builds loyalty, segmentation, and email flows as structural parts of the commerce experience from the start. They earned the 2026 LoyaltyLion Best Strategic Loyalty Partner award, reflecting how central retention is to their model.

For TYR Sport, Roswell rebuilt their paid media program from scratch across Google, Meta, and Bing. Through smarter segmentation, creative overhaul, and tighter optimization, the work delivered a 45% ROAS lift and 32% more conversions. 

Featured clients: amika, TYR Sport, IQBAR, Kjaer Weis, Adina Reyter

Core Services:

• Shopify Plus development and migration
• UX/UI design and CRO
• Performance marketing (paid social, paid search)
• Email and SMS retention marketing
• Klaviyo and loyalty program integration
• Ecommerce SEO

8. HyQuality

Headquarters: 980 6th Ave, 2nd Flr, New York, NY 10018.

Rating: 4.9 Clutch.

HyQuality is a Midtown Manhattan ecommerce agency with the kind of long-running experience that is especially useful for stores with several moving parts. Founded in 1997, the agency works across Shopify, Magento, WordPress, and broader digital commerce systems. 

Their services cover custom design and development, marketplace integrations, multichannel marketing, SEO, and CRO. On the commerce side, HyQuality also puts a real focus on marketplace expansion. 

Featured clients: Universal Standard, Public Goods, Li-Lac Chocolates, Plantable, Journelle.

Core Services:

• Shopify ecommerce development
• Ecommerce website design
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• Ecommerce SEO
• Customer journey mapping
• Multi-channel ecommerce marketing
• Email marketing automation
• Personalized advertising

9. Hunter Digital

Headquarters: 137 West 25th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10001.

Rating: 4.9 Clutch.

Hunter Digital is a New York ecommerce marketing agency focused on profitable acquisition for DTC brands. The team works across paid search, Google Shopping, paid social, SEO, and Amazon Ads, while keeping a strong focus on product feeds, analytics, and ecommerce performance. 

That hands-on ecommerce focus shows in their work with Bikini.com. Hunter helped drive a 17x revenue increase, a 6x increase in ad spend, and 750% ROAS after optimizing Google Shopping and product-level performance. 

The agency refined feed management and campaign structure to improve how products appeared and converted across shopping campaigns.

Featured clients: Krimson Klover, City Home, Meadow Blu.

Core Services:

• Paid search marketing
• Google Shopping management, Google Ads
• Paid social advertising
• Market research
• Ecommerce SEO
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• Email & SMS marketing

10. Omnycode

Headquarters: 1740 Broadway, 15th Floor, New York, NY 10019.

Rating: 5.0 Clutch.

Omnycode is a Shopify and BigCommerce-focused ecommerce agency built for brands that need clean technical execution. They cover Shopify Plus migrations, custom development, CRO, ERP integrations, and GA4 setup, so projects stay structured from backend to storefront. 

For Eileen West, Omnycode led a full migration from Magento to Shopify Plus, including a UX redesign, custom theme development, Klaviyo setup, and analytics implementation, which tied to a 28% YoY revenue increase. 

In parallel, for Somm Cellars, their Shopify Plus build delivered 52% growth in new sessions and a 148% increase in unique purchases quarter-over-quarter. 

These results show how their technical work translates into real shopping momentum.

Featured clients: Fabco Shoes, Kellyco, Olivia von Halle, Chris Christensen, trueCABLE.

Core Services:

• Shopify Plus development
• BigCommerce development
• Ecommerce website analytics
• Shopify migration & replatforming
• Headless ecommerce solutions
• Ecommerce SEO

11. Crafted

Headquarters: 450 Lexington Avenue, 4th Fl, New York City, NY 10017.

Rating: 4.9 Clutch.

Crafted approaches ecommerce through what they call “conversion architecture,” where design and development decisions connect directly to funnel performance and customer behavior. They build storefronts and campaigns around how people browse, add to cart, and return. 

On the revenue side, Crafted points out that upsell and cross-sell systems can contribute 10-30% of ecommerce revenue, which explains their focus on AOV optimization and lifecycle strategy. 

On the proof side, they helped FINE & RAW achieve 2X ROAS through UGC-driven ad creative and social commerce campaigns, showing how creative and conversion logic work together.

Featured clients: FINE & RAW, Works Gallery.

Core Services:

• Shopify & Shopify Plus development
• Ecommerce website design
• Headless commerce solutions
• Conversion rate optimization (CRO)
• UX/UI design for ecommerce
• Ecommerce branding strategy
• Ecommerce SEO & digital marketing

12. M+C Saatchi Performance

Headquarters: 16 W 22nd St, 9th floor, New York, NY 10010, USA.

Rating: 4.8 FeaturedCustomers.

M+C Saatchi Performance runs ecommerce marketing with a conversion-first mindset. Their work covers paid search, paid social, programmatic, influencer marketing, streaming TV, and commerce media. 

Their New York positioning leans into full-journey execution, with optimization tied to a sale, download, or subscription depending on the goal. For a clear example, the ASICS case study stands out.

M+C Saatchi Performance drove a 31% YoY increase in website visitors, a 7% YoY revenue increase, and an 11% YoY lift in average order value using programmatic, social, and SEM.

Featured clients: Audible, SoundCloud, Skillz, Spotify, Uber.

Core Services:

• Paid social advertising
• Ecommerce performance marketing
• Paid search campaigns
• Social commerce marketing
• Influencer amplification
• Conversion-focused media buying
• Web design & development

Ecommerce Marketing Trends New York Brands Should Watch in 2026

Before you start reaching out to agencies, it’s worth knowing which ecommerce trends are already changing how New York brands sell, advertise, and retain customers across different e-commerce platforms.

Faster Fulfillment Shapes Customer Expectations 

Delivery speed is a huge part of the marketing conversation in NYC, and customer experience is the biggest talking point..

Customers expect flexible delivery windows, same-day options, and smoother post-purchase experiences across mobile shopping.

According to the Apidots research referenced at the beginning, 56% of NYC online shoppers abandon carts when same-day delivery is unavailable.

That pressure pushes ecommerce brands to coordinate marketing campaigns with fulfillment operations much more closely, especially during seasonal launches and paid social spikes.

Mobile-First Buying Becomes the Default

One out of every three online purchases in the U.S. is now made on a mobile device. And in a highly advanced market like New York, that number is likely even higher. 

Product pages, checkout flows, ad creative, and email clicks all need to be made for thumb-scrolling shoppers first. Strong user experience has a direct impact on conversions when customers move from social discovery to checkout in a few taps. For brands, this changes the agency brief. 

The strongest brands now focus on short landing pages, fast-loading PDPs, mobile wallet checkout, payment system integration, vertical video, SMS timing, email flows, and product discovery inside social apps.

AI Pricing and Consumer Trust Become a Bigger Conversation

AI pricing tools continue spreading across ecommerce, especially in large retail markets like NYC. Brands use them to react to demand shifts, inventory pressure, competitor pricing, and customer behavior almost instantly.

At the same time, New York lawmakers have already started pushing back against surveillance pricing and aggressive algorithmic pricing models. 

That means ecommerce brands will need stronger transparency around discounts, subscriptions, loyalty programs, and pricing logic moving forward.

How Much Do Ecommerce Marketing Agencies in New York Cost?

According to Clutch’s 2026 NYC ecommerce agency rankings, many established agencies in the city now operate around $100 to $200+ hourly rates, while larger strategic partners charge even higher retainers for ecommerce-focused work.

For most growing Shopify and DTC brands, monthly retainers usually land somewhere between $3,500 and $10,000, depending on paid media volume, creative production, email/SMS management, CRO, content strategy, and reporting complexity. 

Enterprise ecommerce programs can climb well beyond $25,000 per month once Amazon management, influencer campaigns, advanced attribution, and multi-channel creative enter the picture.

New York pricing also tends to run 20% to 50% higher compared to smaller US markets because agencies here operate in more competitive talent and advertising environments. That includes deeper access to media buyers, creative strategists, retention teams, and technical partners who can support more complex digital solutions.

Ready to Scale Your Ecommerce Brand? 

New York ecommerce is expensive, crowded, and extremely performance-driven. 

The real goal here is fit. 

A Shopify fashion brand, a beauty subscription company, and an Amazon-heavy retail brand all need different agency strengths. Use this guide to build a smarter shortlist, compare specializations, and choose a team that fits your needs.

The best agencies create strategies around how your brand makes money. 

That’s exactly the approach we take at 9AM.

We help ecommerce brands build performance systems where creative, acquisition, conversion, and retention work together to drive profitable growth.

Book a call with 9AM and let’s talk about where your brand can go next. 

FAQs

Which marketing channels matter most for NYC ecommerce brands in 2026?

Paid social still drives a huge share of ecommerce revenue in New York, especially across Meta, TikTok, and creator-led campaigns. More brands are investing in retention channels like email, SMS, loyalty programs, and AI-driven personalization to balance rising acquisition costs.

What should a New York ecommerce brand ask before hiring an agency?

Ask how they measure profitability, how often they test creative, which ecommerce platforms they work with, and how they handle retention after the first purchase. A good answer should mention CAC, MER, ROAS, AOV, LTV, conversion rate, and repeat purchase behavior in practical terms.

Why do ecommerce brands switch agencies so often?

Most ecommerce brands outgrow agencies once performance plateaus or channel complexity increases. A team built for small paid social campaigns may struggle with retention systems, creative testing velocity, attribution, or marketplace expansion later on.

Does 9AM work better for early-stage brands or larger ecommerce companies?

9AM supports both, though the strongest fit usually comes from ecommerce brands actively scaling across paid media and creative production. That includes Shopify brands, DTC companies, and retail-focused ecommerce teams looking for faster testing and stronger conversion performance.

New York City is one of the most expensive and competitive places in the world to buy media. NYC agencies handle roughly 40% of all national media billings, within a creative economy worth over $110 billion.

That also means cost per thousand impressions (CPM) here is among the highest in the country. And, buying media without the right partner means you're paying premium rates for placements that may not perform as expected.

The right media buying agency changes that. They know which NYC placements are worth the premium, how paid channels fit into your larger marketing strategy, and how to give you reporting that connects spend to real business outcomes.

In this article, you’ll discover:

• Top 15 media buying agencies operating in NYC
• The channels and industries each one specializes in
• Relevant client results and campaign examples
• A practical framework to help you pick the right fit
• What’s shifting in NYC media buying in 2026

 P.S. If you want to go beyond media buying and look at the full performance marketing picture, our breakdown of the best performance marketing agencies in NYC covers that.

How We Evaluated the Best Media Buying Agencies in NYC

We looked at agencies with a proven track record in media buying and media planning across New York City. The factors we weighed include:

• Demonstrated results, including ROAS, conversions, and campaign performance metrics that clients can actually verify.
• Channel depth across paid social, programmatic advertising, connected TV, digital marketing, and traditional formats like billboard advertising and radio.
• Approach to media strategy, from audience segmentation to real-time bidding and campaign optimization.
• Transparency in reporting, meaning clear KPI tracking and analytics that tie spend to real business outcomes.
• Client diversity across industries like healthcare, retail, eCommerce, and entertainment.

We also factored in reputation, including client reviews, industry recognition, and how long these agencies have been operating at a high level in the NYC media market.

Top Media Buying Agencies in NYC: What Each One Does Best

1. Nine.am (9AM)

• Website: nine.am
• Location: 90 Broad St, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10004
• Rating: 4.9/5 (G2)

At 9AM, we create media strategies around profitability. We structure every campaign so that creative production, media buying, and analytics work together. That means that your budget decisions are guided by performance data from day one.

You can see the result in our work for GenomeLink, where we reduced CAC by 77% over three years. For Booksy, we drove a 1,700% increase in business registrations while cutting cost per registration by 92% in six months. We also hold Premier Partner status with Google, Meta, and TikTok.

Notable clients: Bumble, Abbott, Hopper, The Farmer's Dog, Hurom, NielsenIQ. 

Core services: Media buying (paid social, search, programmatic, CTV, retail media), creative strategy, influencer partnerships, growth strategy, analytics and measurement.

2. Noble People

• Website: noblepeople.co
• Location: 96 Morton St, Floor 3, New York, NY 10014
• Rating: 5.0/5  (Clutch)

Noble People was built by people from some of the most awarded advertising agencies (Fallon, Wieden+Kennedy, Crispin Porter + Bogusky) who believed media planning should be a creative act. They cut out vendor rebates entirely and charge based on team time.

Their Jira campaign is a good one. Jira was always seen as a developer tool, and they wanted to change that. Noble People placed ads in airports, rideshares, and streaming platforms to reach knowledge workers in the right mindset. The result: +20 points in ad recall, 132% top of funnel growth, and +13 points lift in usage intent.

Notable clients: PayPal, Jira, Slack, Marco's Pizza, Harry's, Klarna. Core services: Communications strategy, media planning and buying, broadcast TV, OTT, paid social, OOH, performance media, data analytics.

3. Direct Agents

• Website: directagents.com
• Location: 5th Ave & E 21st St (Flatiron District), New York, NY
• Rating: 5.0/5 (Clutch)

Direct Agents is an independent agency that has been running since 2003. They built a proprietary AI platform called Kanopy that integrates first-party data and audience intelligence into campaign planning. This is a great advantage as third-party cookies phase out.

Their Funimation campaign is a good example of what their AI-powered digital strategy looks like in practice. They cut CPA by 60%, averaged 20% month-over-month growth across all business units, and hit a 60% conversion rate within six months.

Notable clients: Samsung, BBC, Carhartt, Colgate, Morgan Stanley, Scholastic. 

Core services: Paid media, search engine optimization, Amazon and commerce media, creative design, data and analytics, media mix modeling.

4. Tinuiti

• Website: tinuiti.com
• Location: 111 West 33rd St, New York, NY
• Rating: 5.0/5 (Clutch)

Tinuiti is one of the largest independent marketing agencies in NYC, with $4 billion in digital media under management. 

Their edge is Bliss Point, a patented measurement platform used by 300+ brands to see exactly which media spend is driving revenue. It includes rapid media mix modeling, incrementality testing, and brand equity tracking, all in one system.

Forrester has called out their Amazon ad strategies as some of the strongest in the field.

Notable clients: e.l.f. Cosmetics, Bombas, Etsy, Eddie Bauer, Ancestry. 

Core services: Paid search, paid social, Amazon and marketplace media, streaming TV and audio, influencer marketing, lifecycle marketing, analytics.

5. Amsive

• Website: amsive.com
• Location: 915 Broadway, Suite 501, New York, NY 10010
• Rating: 4.5/5 (Clutch)

Amsive's biggest differentiator is their proprietary data platform, Xact, which covers 250 million universal IDs with over 70,000 custom attributes. 

That means they can build audience segments from their own data, even if you show up with zero first-party data to start with. They call this approach Audience Science, and it drives everything from channel selection to creative messaging.

Notable clients: Fast Company, Commerce Bank, Hiscox, Keene State College.

Core services: Paid search, programmatic, SEO, direct mail, performance creative, audience science and data analytics, and social media.

6. Involved Media

• Website: involvedmedia.com
• Location: 470 7th Ave, New York, NY 10018
• Rating: 5.0/5 (Clutch)

Involved Media is an NYC media planning and buying agency backed by a global parent company with over $1 billion in buying power. That gives them the negotiating power of a large network with the agility of a smaller team.

For their Jackson Hewitt campaign, they secured the lowest TV CPM in the category (per iSpot.TV) and beat the #2 advertiser's share of voice by 9 points while spending 71% less.

Notable clients: U Beauty, Jackson Hewitt, Quicken. 

Core services: Media strategy, tactical planning, research and analytics, programmatic, CTV, broadcast, radio, OOH, digital media.

7. The Charles

• Website: thecharlesgrp.com
• Location: 401 Broadway, Suite 601, New York, NY 10013
• Rating: 5.0/5  (Clutch)

This ad agency focuses on luxury and heritage brands that need premium campaigns.

Their team handles everything from paid media to website design, which gives them tight control over how a brand shows up across every touchpoint.

In their Birkenstock campaign, they repositioned the brand as recovery footwear for runners. They built the entire narrative around ultramarathoner stories and ran it across paid media, social, and the Birkenstock website.

Notable clients: Birkenstock, Marriott Bonvoy, Cartier.

Core services: Media buying and planning, brand strategy, content marketing, digital marketing, web development and design and, analytics and measurement.

8. Horizon Media

• Website: horizonmedia.com
• Location: 75 Varick St, New York, NY 10013
• Rating: 4.5/5 (Google) 

Horizon Media is one of the largest independent media agencies in the U.S., with $9 billion in billings and over 2,300 employees. Founded in 1989, they've built multiple proprietary platforms:

• Blu - their marketing data platform that brings together behavioral economics and media planning
• Neon -  an AI retail media platform
• Mavin - a native short-form video tool
• Caliper - for digital media optimization and forecasting

All of that technology is built in-house, so your planning, buying, and reporting are connected from the start. They've also been named U.S. Media Agency of the Year by both Adweek and Ad Age.

Notable clients: Geico, A&E Networks, Burger King, Capital One, LG Electronics. 

Core services: Media planning and buying, brand strategy, communications planning, programmatic advertising, connected TV, retail media, analytics and measurement, sports, and experiential marketing.

9. Ai Media Group

• Website: aimediagroup.com
• Location: 213 West 35th St, New York, NY 10001 
• Rating: 5.0/5 (Clutch)

Ai Media Group is built around Atrilyx, their patented attribution platform that tracks every touchpoint in the customer journey and deduplicates conversions across channels. This removes platform bias from your reporting, so you see which campaigns are driving customer acquisition and which ones are just taking credit.

You can use Atrilyx as a standalone attribution engine with your existing team, or partner with Ai Media Group as a full-service media agency. The team boasts that most clients see stronger efficiency within 60 to 90 days.

Notable clients: Spectrum, Oscar De La Renta, Hilton, Ferrari, Lexus, Panasonic. 

Core services: Paid search, paid social, programmatic advertising, connected TV, SEO, creative, CRO/CRM, analytics, and reporting.

10. Markacy

• Website: markacy.com
• Location: 199 Water St, New York, NY 10038
• Rating: 4.8/5 (Clutch)

Markacy is a financially-driven performance marketing agency. They connect every media investment directly to profit and loss outcomes, so your CFO and CMO are working from the same playbook.

They made a proprietary analytics platform called “Gather” that consolidates data across channels into real-time business intelligence. We like that the team also supports Private Equity firms with marketing diligence and post-deal value creation, which speaks to their financial rigor.

Notable clients: Microsoft Advertising, Scheid Family Wines, Hobo International. 

Core services: Paid media (search, social, programmatic, television), SEO, email marketing, creative development, media mix modeling, incrementality testing, analytics.

11. OMD USA

• Website: omd.com
• Location: 195 Broadway, New York, NY 10007
• Rating: 3.7/5 (OMR)

OMD (Omnicom Media) is one of the largest media agencies in NYC, with $35.6 billion in global billings and over $11 billion in North America.

Their media planning and buying runs on Omni, Omnicom's marketing orchestration platform, which connects audience data, media planning, and creative activation. RECMA has ranked OMD the #1 global media network for 11 consecutive editions, one of the longest streaks of any agency.

Notable clients: PepsiCo, McDonald's, Apple, State Farm, Clorox, Gap Inc., Mercedes-Benz. 

Core services: Media planning and buying, audience analytics, programmatic advertising, connected TV, search, social, content strategy, commerce media, measurement.

12. Good Apple

• Website: goodapple.com
• Location: 135 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10016
• Rating: 4.4/5 (Google Reviews)

Good Apple was founded by former Razorfish employees who wanted to cut the bureaucracy of big agency life. They improve partner efficiencies by 30% on average and assign specialists to each campaign, so your account is managed by someone who already understands your industry.

One culture that sets Good Apple apart is how they use third-party partners to evaluate campaign effectiveness. The team believes agencies shouldn't be grading their own homework. They buy across everything from paid social and programmatic to television and OOH.

Notable clients: Birchbox, PepsiCo, AGTC.

Core services: Media strategy and planning, media buying (social, programmatic, OOH, television, audio), search, analytics, campaign optimization.

What Separates a Great Media Buy From a Good One in NYC

Any advertising agency can set up a media campaign. The difference is how they handle measurement, creative decisions, and channel timing.

Measurement that proves lift, not just attribution 

ROAS is still the most common metric agencies report, but it can't tell you whether a sale would have happened without the ad. A campaign might show a 5x ROAS, while 40% of those conversions were already going to happen organically.

That's why top NYC agencies use incrementality insights, with frameworks like geo-lift testing, which compares exposed audiences against control groups.

According to an eMarketer and TransUnion survey, 52% of U.S. brand and agency marketers already use incrementality testing, and 36% plan to increase spending on it over the next 12 months.

If your agency only reports ROAS, you're making budget decisions based on incomplete data. 

Frequency management that protects every impression

NYC CPMs are expensive. If your agency isn't actively managing frequency caps, you're paying premium rates to show the same ad to the same person over and over again.

Watch for:

• Frequency distribution reports, not just averages
• Cross-platform frequency across Meta, TikTok, YouTube, and display
• Audience segments seeing the same ad 10+ times per week

At that point, you are likely paying for fatigue, not conversions.

Channel expansion backed by controlled testing 

Agencies love recommending new channels, but the question is not “Should we be on CTV?”

It’s: “Will CTV beat reallocating that budget to a proven channel?”

A strong media buying agency tests new channels with controlled budgets and scales only when the data supports it.

Performance baselines that hold everyone accountable

Without a baseline, your results are missing context. A 3x ROAS means little if the account was already at 2.8x.

Before hiring an agency, define:

• CPA by channel
• ROAS by campaign type
• Organic traffic and conversion trends
• Revenue attribution by source

The best agencies set these baselines during onboarding. If yours does not, bring it up early.

What's New in NYC Media Buying in 2026

Programmatic, CTV, and retail media are changing media buying in New York City. 

Programmatic now makes up 91% of all digital display ad spending, so agencies need a dedicated media strategy, inventory control, clean access to demand-side platforms, and ongoing campaign optimization. 

CTV is also gaining budget. CTV completion rates sit around 90-95% compared to 40-60% for mobile video, and NYC brands target specific ZIP codes without buying a full metro-wide TV campaign.

Retail media is growing, too. Amazon, Walmart, and Target offer ad inventory tied to purchase data, which makes it useful for eCommerce brands that need clearer attribution.

Finding the Right Media Buying Partner in NYC

The agencies on this list represent a range of specialties and unique approaches. Some are built for enterprise-scale global campaigns, while others are built for growth-stage startups that need every dollar to perform. 

The right fit depends on your budget, vertical, and how hands-on you want your agency relationship to be. 

If you're looking for a media buying partner that ties creative, media, and measurement into one workflow, our team can help.

Book a strategy call today, and we’ll show you exactly how your budget can work harder in New York's most competitive market.

FAQs

What channels do NYC media buying agencies usually manage?

Most agencies handle a mix of paid social, search, programmatic display, connected TV, and sometimes out-of-home advertising. Many NYC agencies specialize in cross-channel media strategies, especially when paid media needs to support broader brand awareness goals.

How much do media buying agencies in NYC charge? 

Most NYC agencies charge either a flat monthly retainer or 10 to 20% of your total media spend. The average hourly rate among top NYC media buying agencies is $100-$149 per hour.

Is a local NYC agency better than a remote one for media buying? 

For campaigns that involve OOH, local broadcast, or NYC-specific inventory, yes. Local agencies have direct relationships with publishers. They know which placements perform in specific boroughs and can move faster on time-sensitive buys, which is why many digital marketing agencies still keep a strong local media network.

Appendix

• New York City Advertising Industry: Data Reports 2026
• OMNICOM MEDIA NAMED BEST PERFORMING GLOBAL MEDIA GROUP, EARNS #1 RANKING ACROSS ALL FOUR REGIONS
• Omnicom Media Named Best Performing Global Media Group, Earns #1 Ranking Across all Four Regions 
• FAQ on incrementality: How to prove your ads actually work in 2026 
• What is the average CTV CPM? (Q1 2025)
• The US Programmatic Advertising Market: Automation, Scale and Efficiency - TechBullion

The need for executive-level measurements that link ads to business growth has increased over the years.

Finance managers need something more than just ROAS to convince them that their marketing investment was worth it.

That’s why in this guide, we give you actionable advice on how to calculate and use MER to notice problems that other metrics may be blind to.

You’ll see the benchmark MER for your kind of company and get an action plan you can implement based on your target MER. 

And once you’re ready to communicate marketing gains to management, our downloadable sample reporting template shows you exactly how to give recommendations at the next meeting.

Let’s dive in.

TL;DR

• MER = Total revenue divided by Total marketing spend
• Good MER is typically between 3.0 and 5.0
• ROAS is a platform-specific metric for measuring revenue from a marketing campaign or a platform/channel
• ROAS fails because multiple channels claim the same sale/conversion
• MER works best for business-level decision making and overall business health, while ROAS is great at campaign-specific measurement
• Applying both appropriately gives you the big picture on how to fully make ad dollars work for you.

The Attribution Dilemma: Why Upper Management Doesn’t Trust Platform ROAS 

At the upper-level of management, your CFO primarily cares about one thing: revenue growth.

So when you’re at a strategy meeting, going on and on about the 17% reduction in customer acquisition costs, the first question any manager asks is:

“Okay, so we should be in the green. Why aren’t we?”

And those 11 words stop you smack in the middle of your 42-slide PowerPoint presentation.

That’s where ROAS starts to lose credibility.

CAC usually enters the same conversation as ROAS because both are used to prove paid media efficiency. But when platform ROAS looks strong and CAC looks lower while total revenue still feels flat, management starts questioning the measurement model itself.

Here’s the problem with basic ROAS: it gives you tunnel vision.

You start thinking that one channel performing well means marketing is working overall. But in this post-iOS 14 and cookie-restricted world, the last click takes all. Any platform responsible for the final interaction can claim the full conversion, even when earlier touchpoints helped create the demand.

The harder it gets to track third-party data, the more over-attribution becomes a recurring problem. That doesn’t make all your data useless, but it does make platform-reported ROAS harder to trust for budget planning.

Fighting Attribution-Blindness With Marketing Efficiency Ratio

Metrics like CAC, CPC, and CTR often support the ROAS story. A campaign may show a lower CPC, stronger CTR, better CAC, and higher platform ROAS, but that still doesn’t prove it created incremental revenue.

That’s the attribution blindness problem.

ROAS can mislead for two main reasons.

• First, it often excludes parts of brand spend, creative production, influencer activity, and other costs that helped create the sale. That can make performance look more efficient than it really is.
• Second, platform ROAS is channel-specific. It tells you what happened inside one platform, but it does not show how that platform interacted with the rest of your marketing ecosystem. So platform ROAS creates a walled-garden problem, where each channel can overstate its own role in the sale.

This is also why non-marketing managers struggle with campaign-level metrics. CTR, CPC, CAC, and ROAS may all show useful signals, but they don’t automatically explain whether marketing is improving total business performance.

Marketers may see the connection instantly. Your CFO sees the bottom line.

This is where MER cuts through the attribution noise.

MER does not try to assign perfect credit to every touchpoint. Instead, it steps above the attribution fight by comparing total revenue to total marketing spend. So if an email newsletter plants the idea, paid social reinforces demand, and the final conversion happens through search or direct traffic, MER still captures the overall efficiency of the system.

That makes it easier to answer the question leadership actually cares about:

“For every dollar we spend on marketing, how much revenue are we generating?”

Stronger attribution can help reduce wasted ad spend, but MER solves a different problem. It gives managers a cleaner business-level view when platform attribution becomes too noisy, fragmented, or overinflated.

What Is MER?

Marketing Efficiency Ratio, also known as Media Efficiency Ratio (MER), is a measure of the relationship that exists between the total revenue your company makes and everything you spend on advertising, within a timeframe.

Unlike your ROAS, which is a campaign-level metric, MER steps back to look at performance from a holistic angle. 

All campaigns and channels are viewed at once to show how effectively all your marketing investments are turning into business revenue.

How to calculate MER?

Marketing Efficiency Ratio is a simple calculation using this formula: your total revenue divided by total marketing spend/expense.

So, for example, if you spent $1 million on marketing and made $4 million, your MER would be 4.0. Meaning that for every ad dollar spent, you get back four dollars for your business.

From the formula, you can already see there is no channel isolation or single ad campaign focus. What you get is the cumulative effect of all your marketing activity working together. 

This activity goes beyond BOFU conversion attribution to include top-of-funnel channels like TikTok and blog posts. This matters because TikTok is 1.9x more likely to be responsible for the first click than the last click, so the platform is great at tuning an audience in on your brand.

MER even accounts for the word-of-mouth or brand impact that you can’t measure. This is why it’s often referred to as blended ROAS.

You can also use advanced variations of MER, like;

• aMER (acquisition MER) for new customers = New Customer Total Revenue / Marketing Spend.
• Marginal/contribution margin = (Total Revenue - COGS) / Total Ad Spend (The COGS is the cost of producing/delivering the items sold.)

You can use these to explain more nuanced problems, but we advise you to start with basic MER first.

MER vs TACoS

Some industries frame MER up as Total Advertising Cost of Sale (TACoS), because they’re conceptually similar.

They both try to understand the impact of all marketing efforts and what you spend on all of your revenue.

But where MER shows the revenue for every dollar spent, TACoS shows the ad spend for every dollar earned.

Another fundamental difference is in their industry application.

The Marketing Efficiency Ratio can be used just about anywhere. Whereas with TACoS, you’ll have to be an Amazon/eComm marketer to hear this term used as often.

Benefits of Following MER

MER helps you cut through platform-by-platform noise and meet your central business objectives.

It isn’t supposed to guide media-buying decisions at the campaign level, but on the broader stage, it’s a northstar metric that makes sense of how your marketing costs are a multiplier of revenue generation.

Other benefits include:

• It is an optimal budget reallocation indicator
• It provides a holistic business view
• It helps with strategic decision-making
• It is a great performance tracker
• It tells you when you might be underinvested and need to increase marketing spend.

We’ll get to see each of these benefits manifest in different ways throughout this article.

What Is a Good MER? MER Benchmarks per Industry

Good MER usually stays within the 3.0 and 5.0 mark, but that’s a general assumption. The truth is, there is no universally accepted answer to “What is a good Marketing Efficiency Ratio?”

What’s good for your business depends entirely on the industry you operate in, your business lifecycle, and your growth goals.

Across 9AM clients, median MER typically ranges between 4.2x and 4.8x, which shows strong revenue efficiency across managed accounts. This means marketing is driving attributed platform results and supporting healthy total revenue relative to spend. Still, MER targets should always be evaluated by business model, margin, growth stage, and revenue goals. 

Here’s how practical MER ranges usually differ by industry:

When You Need MER vs When to Use ROAS

Use MER when looking at the bigger picture at the macro level, and use ROAS when looking channel-by-channel at the campaign level (micro level).

Yes, it’s that simple.

MER sidesteps attribution issues in a world with ever-increasing privacy issues. It shines in omnichannel campaigns where there might be multiple touch points before the sale.

That “expected” conversion from your paid campaign may have started earlier, when a blog post, creator mention, email, or social touchpoint created demand. Campaign ROAS may still credit the sale to the final ad interaction, but it won’t show the full path that made the conversion possible.

But ROAS has its place, too.

Since ROAS campaign revenue is divided by campaign spend, it tells you which platforms, ads, or audiences are converting best under your attribution model.

And it shows what channels you need to optimize or reallocate budget to or from for maximum impact.

To summarize this comparison:

Use Marketing Efficiency Ratio when:

• Proving the effectiveness of marketing for budget approval.
• Evaluating overall business health and profitability (if you include COGS, shipping, discounts, salaries, tooling, and agency fees in your marketing spend from the start).
• Measuring the combined impact of paid and organic marketing, on top of brand awareness activities.

Use Return On Ad Spend when:

• Optimizing for a single channel or campaign.
• Allocating and reallocating budget (tactical decisions).
• Testing strategies like bidding, creative, and targeting.

MER vs Other Metrics

Let's compare MER with other metrics to see where it’s ideal to use each one:

• ROI vs MER:
  • ROI = Net profit / Investment cost
  • MER = Total revenue / Total marketing spend

ROI measures profitability. MER measures revenue efficiency.

That difference matters. ROI requires a clear view of profit, which means you need to account for product costs, fulfillment, salaries, agency fees, software, overhead, and other expenses. MER is simpler because it asks a narrower question: how much revenue did the business generate for every dollar spent on marketing?

MER is easier to use as a high-level marketing signal, but it should not replace profitability analysis. A business can have a strong MER and still struggle with margins if product costs, discounts, returns, or operating costs are too high.

• CAC vs MER:
  • CAC = Sales and marketing costs / New customers acquired
  • MER = Total revenue / Total marketing spend

CAC tells you how much it costs to acquire a new customer, so it’s useful when you want to understand acquisition efficiency. MER tells you how efficiently total marketing spend turns into total revenue, so it’s useful when you want to understand whether the whole marketing engine is producing enough revenue.

If CAC looks strong but MER is weak, the issue could be low order value, weak repeat purchase behavior, poor retention, heavy discounting, delayed revenue, or too much spend going into channels that do not convert quickly.

If MER is strong but CAC is weak, marketing may still be producing revenue overall, but new customer acquisition could be getting expensive. In that case, you should be careful about scaling spend until you know whether repeat purchases, LTV, retention, or existing customer revenue are carrying the numbers.

MER Action Plan: Combining MER + ROAS

The Marketing Efficiency Ratio isn’t meant to replace ROAS or any other campaign-specific metric. In fact, its true strength shines when you pair it with ROAS.

MER is great at spotting a problem or opportunity, and on the granular level, ROAS tells you where to focus your marketing efforts based on the MER’s observation.

When MER Is Below Your Target

This usually means total revenue is not keeping up with total marketing spend, so you need to diagnose the cause across pricing, conversion, offer, channel mix, margins, and measurement windows.

But before concluding, you should first check that your measurement window is right. 

Daily MER is usually too noisy for strategic decisions. Monthly MER can show direction, but quarterly MER gives a cleaner read, especially if your sales cycle is long, your campaigns have delayed impact, or seasonality affects demand. 

Next, use ROAS to check if your channel mix is wrong or underperforming, then diagnose the problem (hint: you might be spending on channels that don’t make a difference).

When MER Is Above the Target

On the reverse, a high MER ratio is great, but it is no cause to celebrate just yet. More often than not, you might be underinvesting in marketing*. Whether you’re an eCommerce business, a B2B, or a growing SaaS brand, you could be growing a lot faster instead of sitting on your laurels.

* Side note: It can also mean strong organic demand, strong retention, efficient lifecycle revenue, seasonal demand, or temporary demand capture.

To make sure you’re sufficiently geared, try to scale paid media spend by, say, 10-15%

If MER remains level, you likely have room to scale. But check contribution margin, new vs returning customer mix, CAC, payback period, and operational capacity before continuing to raise spend.

So you can keep raising spending until MER starts to decline. At that point, you can ease your foot off the gas, but only a little bit.

There are exceptions, of course. If your current MER satisfies your growth and internal goals, you can keep doing what you’re doing. 

It's not always about maximizing revenue to the nth degree.

Bottom line: MER gives executives a simple answer to a business-level question: is total marketing spend producing enough revenue to justify the investment?

Common MER Mistakes

Here are some of the patterns we’ve found come up again and again when marketers and businesses are new at trying out MER:

• Cherry picking your best MER sales cycles and windows. This kills credibility and shouldn’t be your go-to. Instead, we advise you to show consistent measurement windows and even include important context like seasonality.
• Excluding any spend, especially brand spend, since it may be hard to attribute. You make MER artificially high when you do this, and that might mislead the whole organization.
• Comparing across different industries and growth stages. A disruptive FinTech and a mature eCommerce storefront have entirely different average MERs. It’s best to compare against your own industry benchmarks and your company’s MER history.
• Using MER for channel-specific decisions. Instead of doing that, use MER as a general diagnostic, and then flex your improved ROAS and other special metrics accordingly. 
• Panicking over short-term dips in the MER. MER is better over longer periods (quarterly and biannually), so it may take some time to show up. Be calm and don’t let management see you sweat.

Finance Team Reporting Template

Here’s a one-slide dashboard that won’t overwhelm your CFO, while still incorporating platform-ROAS:

Target MER: 3.5 - 5.0

Current MER: 4.6

Trending: Upward 15%, Quarter-on-Quarter. 

Contribution per Channel:

• Social Media (Paid): 22% of revenue ← 25% of spend
• Social Media (Organic): 30% of revenue ← 20% of spend
• Paid Search: 13% of revenue ← 15% of spend
• Organic Search: 20 of revenue ← 15% of spend
• Email: 10% of revenue ← 15% of spend
• Direct/Referral/Brand/Other: 5% of revenue ← 10% of spend

Recommendations: Increase ad spend by 10% in the next quarter.

Reason: MER has been strong within the target over the past 9 months.

That’s all there is to it. You can go deeper during the weekly marketing stand-up meeting with your team. But everything finance managers are concerned about is:

• Current MER against Target MER
• Trend direction as well as velocity
• Clear recommendations with defensible reasoning
• Measurement confidence levels

Correct Your ROAS & MER With 9AM

You now know what MER is, how it works, and even have a neat template for anytime you have to consolidate all the various metrics into a simple report.

Now it’s time to implement that improved action plan at the corporate level, and there’s no agency better suited to meet your measurement needs than 9AM.

Get on a strategy call with us today to get a front row seat to your personalized MER analysis and a progress roadmap.

FAQ

If we have a super low MER but are growing just fine, should we be worried?

You shouldn’t be bothered. If you’re growing just fine, then you probably have a unique growth target different from what your average business (e.g., hypergrowth). Just to be sure, audit your performance to check if you’re blowing money on ineffective marketing. 

How quickly can MER improve?

Sustainable change is noticeable within 3 to 6 months. If an agency promises a one-month change, then we hate to break it to you, it’s a dud. Marketing has a compounding effect where it builds up slowly and then quickly starts to multiply.

What is the relationship between MER and ROAS?

MER is calculated as the ratio of total earnings from all marketing efforts. It contains all ROAS measurements (channel-tied revenue divided by channel-tied spend) within it.

Can MER include marketing team salaries?

It’s best practice that you do this. Since MER is an efficiency ratio, adding all expenses, including non-direct expenses like salaries, lets you measure true efficiency. But if your goal is understanding how effective a marketing campaign was, then you don’t need to add salaries in your MER formula.

If 3:1 ROAS is good, isn’t that the same as 3.0 MER?

No, because ROAS is idealistic, and MER is attribution-agnostic. For instance, platform ROAS doesn’t account for brand spend and even duplicates attribution to look better. When you take into account all these excluded expenses, that 3:1 ROAS can be a 2.0 MER, or even lower.

Appendix

1. Transcend: https://transcend.io/blog/2025-cookie-consent-laws
2. Neil Patel: https://neilpatel.com/marketing-stats/customer-journey-touchpoints/
3. MarketingLTB: https://marketingltb.com/blog/statistics/marketing-attribution-statistics/
4. Investopedia: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fastmoving-consumer-goods-fmcg.asp
5. Admetrics: https://www.admetrics.io/en/post/marketing-efficiency-ratio-dtc-ecommerce-22858
6. Alexander Jarvis: https://www.alexanderjarvis.com/what-is-marketing-efficiency-in-saas

New York has it all.

It’s where cultures meet, trends are born, and you can grab a slice of pizza at 4 a.m. while someone plays your favorite song on the sidewalk.

And, for many brands, it’s the dream location. 

But making it in the city takes more than being in the right place. You need social media marketing. And it’s not just us saying that. New York small businesses generated nearly $1 trillion in sales and revenue in 2023, according to a 2026 report.

That’s why we made this list: to help you find the New York City paid social agencies that can help you compete in a city full of opportunity.

More specifically, we put it together for teams that need to scale paid social advertising while maintaining media-buying discipline. If your CAC is climbing, you are in the right place.

Let's get into it:

*Disclaimer: Yes, we included ourselves in this list. We evaluated 9AM using the same criteria as the other agencies and will cover both strengths and limitations objectively so you can decide if they’re a fit. 

How We Evaluated the Agencies on This List

To create this list, we looked at the factors that directly influence paid social performance:

• Specialization

Paid social had to be central to the agency’s work.

• Verifiable results

We prioritized case studies with real business outcomes, like ROAS gains, CPA drops, and revenue growth.

• Repeatable process

We favored agencies with structured testing frameworks, clear data reporting, and a repeatable social media strategy.

All About The Best Agencies for Scaling Paid Social in New York

Below are the best New York agencies that help brands scale paid social, with a closer look at what each team does particularly well.

1. Socialfly

Best for: Paid social + brand storytelling.

Location: 231 West 29th Street, Suite 702, New York, NY 10001

Socialfly focuses on social media campaigns that include creative storytelling. 

For example, their campaign for SUMMIT One Vanderbilt reduced CAC by 40% with a mix of engaging social content and paid media.

With over 300 clients served and two appearances on the Inc. 5000 list, Socialfly is the pick for creativity and performance marketing. 

Notable clients: HBO Max, SUMMIT One Vanderbilt, Girl Scouts, Discovery, and 20th Century 

2. 9AM Agency

Best for: Brands that want paid social to become a reliable growth channel.

Location: 90 Broad Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10004

At 9AM, we’re all about structured creative testing and full-funnel media buying. We create systems that continuously produce and test new creatives so campaigns can scale without creative fatigue.

And we have tangible results. For Mogu Mogu’s launch, we created a network of 65+ micro-influencers who posted reaction content that drove 30M+ account reach at $0.02 per engagement.

Notable clients: Hurom, EVRY Jewels, Booksy, GenomeLink, NielsenIQ, Mogu Mogu

3. Socium Media

Best for: Brands that want paid social guided by strong analytics and media planning.

Location: 251 West 30th Street, Office 501, Floor 5, New York, NY 10001 

For companies that want clearer answers on CAC and campaign performance, Socium Media brings a more analytical approach to paid media management.

As of last year, the team has managed over $100 million in ad spend. They often bring together paid social, search, and other digital channels to understand how customers move from discovery to purchase. 

Notable clients: Catbird, Eberjey, ACV Auctions, Topo Designs

4. NoGood

Best for: Rapid experimentation across paid channels.

Location: 491 Broadway, New York, NY 10013

What sets NoGood apart is their “growth sprint” methodology. They launch many small experiments simultaneously and double down on what works.

They number it back up. NoGood has driven over $1B in revenue for their clients so far.

Their model works well for brands that need performance campaigns, data-driven advertising, search advertising, and a sharper digital strategy across paid channels.

Notable clients: Nike, TikTok, Intuit, ByteDance, P&G

5. Taktical Digital

Best for: Consumer brands and DTC companies

Location: 241 West 37th Street, Suite 802, New York, NY 10018

Taktical Digital promotes what they call “Brandformance marketing”, a model that combines brand building with performance-driven advertising.

This means they design campaigns that generate immediate conversions and strengthen brand awareness over time.

We like their method because if your social media ads get traffic but not results, the Brandformance approach is built to find out why.

Notable clients: Casper, Shake Shack, Billboard, Craigslist, WeWork.

6. Major Tom

Best for: Established brands that want paid social connected to a broader strategy. 

Location: 434 West 33rd Street, New York, NY 10001

Major Tom is a "strategy-first" digital agency with offices in NYC. Their work with OUAI is a great example of what they do:

The haircare brand was growing revenue YOY, but user growth slowed. The team restructured the paid media strategy around new customer acquisition using lookalike and interest-based targeting and delivered a 63% lift in customer acquisition.

Notable clients: PepsiCo, L’Oréal, DoorDash, Hootsuite, Canon.

7. Monks

Best for: Creative production + AI optimization.

Location: 32 Old Slip, New York, NY 10005

Monks is a marketing agency with a particular interest in AI. They launched Monks.Flow, and were named The One Show’s first AI Pioneer Organization.

If your brand is at the stage where paid social needs enterprise-level infrastructure that delivers clarity and impact, Monks is worth consideration.

Their network includes more than 6,800 people across offices worldwide, including New York. 

Notable clients: Google, Netflix, Meta, Adidas, Samsung.

8. We Are Social

Best for: Social campaigns rooted in culture and online communities.

Location: 250 Hudson Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10013

We Are Social is the right call when the biggest obstacle to paid performance is that your brand doesn't yet have cultural traction on social. They study social behaviors, platform behavior, and online communities to build campaigns that earn engagement.

They are strongest when brands need social communities, creator-led campaigns, social media strategists, and social-first creative that feels native to the feed.

Notable clients: Adidas, Tripadvisor, McDonald’s, Netflix, Google.

9. Voy Media

Best for: Paid social media agency heavily focused on Meta advertising.

Location: 333 West 39th Street, New York, NY 10018

Voy Media’s high-testing, high-iteration model produces over 13,700 ad creatives per month across their client base. That output is a good match for brands that want to find what scales quickly. 

Because their model revolves around creative testing in Meta Ads, brands that want a mix of social media platforms may need partners with more platform-specific experiences.

They are a strong option for brands that need video content testing, frequent social media ads, and fast creative iteration.

Notable clients: Lacoste, Salesforce, Universal Music Group, Big Life Journal.

10. Marketing House New York

Best for: Businesses that need multilingual campaign execution.

Location: 75 Rockefeller Plaza, 32nd Floor, New York, NY 10019

Marketing House New York is a hybrid between a creative studio and a paid media agency. They work on campaigns where visual storytelling and social content play a large role in audience engagement.

They run campaigns in eight languages, which makes them a good option for brands managing campaigns across culturally distinct audiences or entering new international markets.

Notable clients: Turkish Airlines, Global New York Chamber of Commerce, 1898 New York.

Why Choose a Local New York Agency for Paid Social?

A New York agency has a closer read on the city’s buying behavior, creative standards, and competitive ad environment. 

That’s important when you’re selling to a target audiences who see strong offers and polished creative all day. A local NYC agency:

• Knows NYC audience segments by borough, income, lifestyle, and intent
• Understands local seasonality around events, retail peaks, and cultural moments
• Can plan shoots, content production, and in-person activations faster
• Has experience competing in high-CPM markets where weak creative gets expensive quickly

What Sets the Best New York Paid Social Agencies Apart

The agencies that consistently scale paid social in New York are building systems that keep campaigns improving over time.

Here are a few patterns you will usually see:

High Creative Output

Creative fatigue is the default enemy of paid social at scale. Agencies serious about this problem will have a clear, practiced answer for how many new creative concepts they produce per month and how quickly they rotate when performance drops. 

You need to:

• Look for structured testing cycles tied to performance thresholds
• Ask to see how many creative variants a current client at your spend level runs monthly
• Find out who owns creative strategy: a dedicated strategist or the media buyer doing double duty

Attribution Focus

In New York, paid social rarely works alone. It runs beside email marketing, Google Ads, influencer marketing, affiliates, and organic traffic.

That’s why the best NYC agencies measure beyond platform metrics with:

• Holdout tests
• Geographic experiments
• Marketing mix analysis

The goal is simple: are ads creating new demand, or claiming conversions that would have happened anyway?

Senior Involvement

New York agencies are expensive to run. That overhead creates pressure to put junior team members on accounts once the relationship is stable.

The agencies worth hiring will not hesitate when you ask who will be in the room in month three.

• Get the experience level of the person who will manage your account day to day
• Ask how often a senior strategist will be directly involved in campaign decisions
• Find out what the escalation process looks like if performance drops

Post-Click Experience

Finally, the agencies that scale campaigns most successfully pay attention to what happens after the click as well.

If the landing page or checkout creates friction, even strong ad creative will struggle.

That’s why high-performing teams treat paid social as one loop:

creative → media buying → landing page → measurement

When those pieces work together, campaigns scale more smoothly.

Conclusion 

New York is a crowded, expensive place to run paid social. Most brands struggle because the same tactics that got them initial traction stop working when spend goes up and audiences get saturated.

If you want a team that has built a solid growth system from the ground up for 120+ brands, we would love to show you what that looks like for your business. 

Book a strategy call today.

FAQs

What KPIs should I expect a strong paid social agency to optimize for?

Strong agencies look beyond CPA and ROAS. The metrics that matter at scale include CAC, marketing efficiency ratio, incremental lift, and payback period. They also track how individual creatives perform over time, including how quickly returns decay as spend increases.

How do I evaluate if an agency can handle enterprise-level scaling?

The most important indicator is whether they have experience managing large, sustained ad spend while maintaining performance. Agencies that can handle enterprise-level scaling demonstrate structured experimentation systems, clear data reporting, and proof of stable performance at higher spend levels.

Why do some brands struggle to scale paid social with strong budgets?

Many brands struggle to scale, not because of inefficient creative systems or a lack of adaptability. The market rewards sharp content creation and high creative output. Without these, even well-funded campaigns tend to plateau quickly due to rising CPMs and diminishing marginal returns on static creative approaches.

How much does a paid social agency in New York typically charge? 

Most mid-tier agencies in New York charge between $3,000 and $15,000 per month, depending on scope, platforms, and whether creative is included. Performance-based or hybrid pricing models are becoming more common, particularly for brands with clear revenue benchmarks.

The customer acquisition cost (CAC) payback period measures how long it takes a brand to earn back the money spent acquiring a new customer.

At first glance, scaling acquisition seems simple: increase ad spend and bring in more customers. But if the revenue from those customers takes too long to return (or doesn’t provide the right return), “growth” can start draining your working capital.

The faster you recover acquisition costs, the easier it is to reinvest in marketing. Longer payback periods tie up cash and make scaling much harder.

In this article, you’ll learn:

• What CAC payback period measures
• The correct formula for DTC brands
• LTV:CAC ratio vs. CAC payback period: What’s the difference?
• How to build a cohort-based model
• Benchmarks across major DTC categories
• How to reduce your payback time

Struggling to turn paid acquisition into predictable, cash-efficient growth? At 9AM, we build performance marketing systems that bring your CAC payback period down and keep it there. Book a free strategy call now.

TL;DR

• CAC payback period tells you how long your acquisition spend stays locked before customers earn it back. ROAS does not answer this.
• The DTC formula that actually works: nCAC ÷ (Contribution Margin per Order × Monthly Purchase Frequency). Using gross revenue or blended CAC will distort the result.
• A blended payback number hides channel-level problems. Cohort-based modeling, segmented by channel, is what turns payback into a real budget tool.
• Under 6 months is ideal for most DTC categories. Over 12 months creates cash flow pressure that limits how fast you can scale.

What Does CAC Payback Period Actually Measure?

The CAC payback period shows how many months it takes for the profit generated by a customer to cover the cost of acquiring them.

A DTC brand with a 5-month CAC payback period can recover its acquisition spend quickly and recycle that cash into new campaigns. 

A brand with an 18-month payback period is essentially fronting the cost of each new customer for a year and a half before seeing a return. That delay creates pressure on cash flow and limits how fast your business can scale.

And here’s a confrontational view point:

In our experience, this metric sometimes matters more than ROAS when you’re thinking about sustainable growth. ROAS tells you the return on a specific campaign, but it doesn’t tell you how long your money is tied up.

Time-Based vs. Unit-Based Recovery

Some operators think about CAC payback in terms of how many orders it takes to recover acquisition cost. That can be useful for understanding customer economics, but it does not show when the cash actually comes back.

For cash flow planning, the more useful view is time-based: how many months it takes for a customer’s cumulative contribution margin to cover their CAC. This shows how long acquisition capital stays tied up before it can be reinvested into new growth.

Why CAC Payback Is Harder to Model in Ecommerce

CAC payback period is often treated as a SaaS metric, but DTC brands cannot copy the SaaS model directly.

In SaaS, revenue usually starts with an initial subscription, then continues through renewals, upgrades, and expansion MRR. That makes payback easier to model because each customer segment tends to follow a clearer recurring revenue pattern.

For enterprise SaaS and other enterprise companies, CAC payback also connects closely to burn rate. If the cost of acquisition is high and the payback window is long, the business needs enough cash to keep funding sales and marketing expenses before those customers become profitable.

DTC brands work differently.

Most customers do not generate fixed monthly revenue, and different customer segments can behave very differently after the first order. One cohort may come back within 30 days, while another may never buy again.

That is why cohort analysis matters so much in ecommerce CAC payback modeling.

You need to see how each acquisition cohort behaves over time instead of assuming a clean subscription-style curve.

This also changes how you evaluate marketing campaigns and customer acquisition strategies. Customers acquired through Meta, Google, influencer campaigns, organic traffic, or email may have different:

• Repurchase behavior
• Contribution margins
• Return rates
• Customer retention patterns
• Customer churn risk

The same logic applies to retention strategies. Improving second-purchase rates, adjusting your pricing strategy, testing selective price increases, or building stronger post-purchase flows can shorten CAC payback without reducing media spend.

In SaaS, teams may use formulas like the TVC formula to understand how variable costs affect profitability. For DTC brands, the same principle applies through contribution margin. The more accurately you account for product costs, fulfillment, shipping, returns, and payment fees, the more reliable your CAC payback model becomes.

LTV:CAC Ratio vs. CAC Payback Period: What’s the Difference?

The LTV:CAC ratio tells you how much value a customer generates over their lifetime relative to what it costs to acquire them. It is a long-term profitability metric tied closely to Customer lifetime value.

Formula: LTV:CAC Ratio = LTV / CAC

The CAC payback period tells you when you recover that acquisition cost through Gross Profit and Monthly profit generated by the customer.

You can have a strong LTV:CAC ratio and still run into cash constraints if payback is too slow. In those cases, revenue looks healthy on paper, but cash flow efficiency breaks down in practice.

Example:

The economics look strong. But if you need 18 months to recover CAC, the company needs substantial capital to fund acquisition.

This is why we at 9AM treat CAC payback period as a more operational metric when evaluating scaling decisions and overall GTM efficiency.

How to Calculate CAC Payback Period for DTC

The simplest way to think about CAC payback is:

CAC Payback Period = CAC ÷ monthly profit per customer

(Where CAC = ad spend ÷ number of new customers)

This gives you the number of months it takes to recover Customer Acquisition Cost from the profit a customer generates.

In practice, things get more nuanced for DTC brands. Monthly profit per customer is not a fixed number. Several moving parts shape it:

• Average order value
• Gross margin and gross profit per customer
• Purchase frequency and repeat behavior
• Returns and refunds
• Fulfillment and shipping costs

A more DTC-specific way to calculate payback period is:

CAC Payback Period = nCAC ÷ (Contribution Margin per Order × Monthly Purchase Frequency)

Here, nCAC stands for new customer CAC: paid spend divided by new customers from paid channels only. This is different from blended CAC, which includes returning customers and makes payback look shorter than it actually is.

This version reflects how ecommerce actually works. Revenue is not always recurring on a fixed schedule, so the recovery of acquisition costs depends heavily on how often customers come back and how much margin is left after each order.

Example Calculation

Imagine a DTC brand with the following metrics:

• nCAC: $60
• Average order value: $80
• Gross margin: 50 percent
• Monthly purchase frequency: 0.4 orders

First, calculate contribution margin per order:

$80 × 50% = $40 per order

Then monthly profit per customer:

$40 × 0.4 = $16 per month

Now calculate CAC payback period:

$60 ÷ $16 = 3.75 months

In this case, the brand recovers its acquisition costs in just under 4 months.

How Small Changes Impact CAC Payback Period

A small change in any input can move payback by months. That sensitivity is what catches most operators off guard. 

To make this concrete, here’s how payback period (in months) shifts across different combinations of contribution margin per order and monthly purchase frequency, assuming a fixed $60 CAC:

The big takeaway: repurchase frequency does more heavy lifting than most operators expect. A customer who reorders monthly cuts payback time in half compared to one who reorders every other month, even at the same margin.

Where the Standard Advice Breaks Down for DTC 

The standard CAC payback formula is straightforward. The trouble is, most DTC operators apply it without adjusting for the parts of their business that quietly distort the result. Here’s where models tend to break down. 

Returns are invisible in most models

An order showing $150 in revenue with a 25% return rate has an effective net revenue of $112.50, which moves both your contribution margin and payback timeline. If you’re calculating against gross order values, your model and your cash position will not match.

Blended CAC creates false confidence

A brand with strong repeat purchaser volume will show a low blended CAC even as new customer acquisition costs climb. Payback is a new customer metric. Always use new customer CAC.

Cohort curves go stale fast

A cohort that looks healthy at month 3 can deteriorate sharply by month 6 if retention drops. Calculating payback quarterly means you are working from delayed signals. Monthly cohort updates are the minimum if you are actively scaling paid acquisition.

Seasonality distorts the model in both directions

Q4 cohorts, especially those acquired during peak periods like Black Friday/Cyber Monday, often carry inflated CAC and skewed first-order AOV from promotional pricing. Running them through the same model as a July cohort produces averages that aren’t accurate for either group.

Multi-touch attribution gaps distort nCAC

If paid channels get credit for orders that organic, email, or returning demand would have driven anyway, paid CAC can look artificially low. If paid channels are under-credited, nCAC can look artificially high. Either way, the payback model becomes unreliable. 

Running an attribution model audit can help identify where these gaps exist and reveal if your reporting is inflating acquisition costs.

Cohort-Based Modeling: The Framework That Works for DTC

Customers acquired through different channels don’t behave the same way, so treating them as one population means you are optimizing for an average that doesn’t reflect any real customer group. 

From our experience, cohort-based modeling fixes that by giving you a real view of how each group of customers performs over time.

It also surfaces patterns that blended metrics hide. You can see healthy overall revenue growth while newer cohorts aren’t sticking around as long. In that situation, your CAC payback period is quietly stretching even as top-line revenue keeps climbing. 

How to Structure a CAC Payback Cohort Model 

Step 1: Define your cohort window

Group customers by acquisition month. Every customer acquired in January is one cohort, February is another. Each cohort is a separate population you track from M0 forward.

Step 2: Track cumulative contribution per cohort

For each subsequent month, record the contribution dollars generated by that cohort. Stack them month-over-month into a running total.

Step 3: Mark the breakeven month. 

Your payback period is the month when cumulative contribution crosses the original acquisition spend for that cohort. This is also the month when LTV:CAC = 1.

Step 4: Segment by channel. 

Run the model separately for Google, TikTok, and Meta ads. Each channel comes with its own margin profile and customer behavior, which means each one has its own payback curve. 

Looking at them this way turns CAC payback into a real budget tool. You get to see which channels are pulling their weight and which ones are dragging the blended number down. 

Step 5: Build a forward projection

Use months 1–3 contribution patterns to project where each cohort will land. That way, you spot a broken cohort early instead of discovering it 12 months in.

The Unrecovered CAC Number

Unrecovered CAC is the portion of your acquisition spend that hasn’t been earned back yet by the customers you spent it on. Every cohort still working through its payback period contributes to this pool, and at any given time, a scaling brand is carrying the sum of it across all active cohorts. This is your working capital trap.

Say you spend $100K per month on acquisition with an 8-month payback period. At steady state, you have $800K of cash tied up in customer acquisition before any new dollar starts working for you.

That number grows directly with acquisition volume, which is why brands that scale ad spend aggressively without tracking unrecovered CAC often run into cash crunches even when their unit economics look healthy on paper.

What Is a “Good” CAC Payback Period in DTC?

A CAC payback period under 12 months is generally considered healthy for DTC, with under 6 months viewed as ideal. However, what’s healthy for you depends on your category, margins, and how often your customers come back.

Here’s a rough breakdown of where most DTC brands should aim by category:

A “good” CAC payback period depends on your funding stage, too:

Use these benchmarks as a sanity check. The real test is how much cash your payback period frees up for the next round of acquisition. When that pool runs thin, growth quietly turns into a working capital problem.

How to Reduce Your CAC Payback Period Without Slashing Ad Spend 

Pulling back on acquisition is the obvious lever, but it is rarely the right one. Cutting spend slows growth before it fixes the underlying problem. There are four other levers that move payback faster. 

1. Increase Contribution Margin per Order

Higher margin per order means each customer pays back faster, no matter how often they buy. The practical levers here are bundling to lift AOV, negotiating better COGS as you scale, and shifting your channel mix toward higher-margin DTC orders over marketplace channels where fees eat into margin.

2. Improve Repurchase Frequency

Every additional order from the same customer compounds against your original acquisition cost. The most effective tactics here:

• Subscribe-and-save programs to convert probabilistic repeat purchase into guaranteed monthly contribution.
• Email and SMS flows timed to actual repurchase windows (not arbitrary calendar schedules) bring customers back at the right moment.
• Loyalty programs work best when they reward the second and third purchase specifically, since that is where most DTC churn happens.B&S Co’s analysis of 156,000+ DTC customers found that only 18.8% make a second purchase within a year, meaning 81% of customers buy once and never return 

3. Reduce nCAC Through Better Targeting

Bringing nCAC down is harder than it used to be, but the levers that still work consistently are: 

• Channel diversification reduces dependence on Meta, where rising ad costs have steadily pushed DTC nCAC higher over the last few years. Triple Whale’s 2025 benchmarks show Meta CPMs rose 20% year-over-year on average, with every industry hit by increases between 8% and 38%.
• Influencer and UGC campaigns often produce lower CPMs than performance creative aimed at cold audiences. UGC-based ads achieve 4x higher click-through rates than average, which brings down effective CPMs.

This approach has worked for our clients. For example, we helped GenomeLink drive a 77% reduction in CAC over three years by building a creative system that produced 70+ unique assets per month across six different creative types. 

The diversity of creative kept acquisition costs low even as the brand scaled, which directly shortened their payback period without cutting media spend. 

4. Stop Discounting on the First Order

This is the most common self-inflicted payback problem in DTC. Offering 20% off on the first purchase compresses your contribution margin on the exact order that needs to do the most work to recover CAC. 

If you must discount to convert, model the payback impact before committing to it. Most brands do not realize they are extending their own payback timeline by design.

Turn CAC Payback Into a Cash Flow Advantage with 9AM 

CAC payback period is one of the clearest signals of whether your DTC growth is sustainable or quietly eating into your runway. The real value comes from modeling it at the cohort level, segmenting by channel, and tracking it consistently as you scale.

Get this right, and you avoid the most common DTC trap: scaling spend faster than your cash can come back to fund the next round of acquisition.

At 9AM, we help DTC brands build payback models that hold up under finance scrutiny and translate them into faster, more confident scaling decisions.

Book a strategy call now to find where cash recovery can be accelerated.

FAQs

What is the CAC payback period for DTC brands? 

The CAC payback period is the number of months it takes for a customer’s cumulative contribution margin to equal the cost of acquiring them. For DTC, this depends on contribution margin per order and repurchase frequency, not just first-order revenue.

What’s a good CAC payback period for ecommerce brands? 

Under 6 months is considered strong for most DTC categories. Above 12 months creates cash flow pressure and typically requires outside capital to sustain. The right benchmark depends on your category, margins, and repurchase cycle.

How do you calculate CAC payback with subscriptions? 

For subscription-based DTC brands, divide your nCAC by the monthly contribution margin per subscriber. Since subscription revenue is more predictable than transactional repeat purchase, the formula simplifies to nCAC ÷ monthly contribution profit, similar to the SaaS approach.

Should I use blended CAC or new customer CAC for payback? 

Always use new customer CAC (nCAC). Blended CAC includes returning customers who cost near-zero to re-engage, which makes payback look shorter than it actually is for new acquisitions.

Appendix

• CAC Payback Basics: What It Is, How to Calculate It and Why It Matters
• CAC Payback Period Explained: Formula + Strategies to Reduce It | Saras Analytics
• What is Lifetime Value (LTV)? (And Why It’s the Most Important Success Metric for Ecommerce)
• Repeat Purchase Rate Benchmarks: 18.8% Across 156K Customers | BS&Co
• Facebook Ad Benchmarks by Industry (Updated Data) | Triple Whale
• DTC CAC Payback Period: What It Is and How to Optimize It | MHI Growth Engine
• CAC Payback Period for E-commerce: How to Scale Profitably

Retail media is where buying decisions happen.

Sponsored product listings, on-site display ads, and retail data partnerships are reaching shoppers right at the moment they’re ready to buy.

But it's not simple.

Rising ad costs, diverse platforms, and the need for really sharp, catchy creative have made this a professional's playground. Which is why having the right full-service retail media agency in your corner can make all the difference.

Let's look at the 15 best retail media agencies in 2026 to help you find a partner that fits all your needs.

How We Evaluated The Best Retail Media Agencies

For this article, we judged the retail marketing agencies based on evidenced industry expertise, considering factors like;

• Certifications, 
• Satisfied past clients, and
• Proprietary marketing developments.

We also weighed past results and whether that success was repeatable, so we can say for certain that you’ll get measurable, significant results each time.

We also wanted credibility to be a factor, so we focused on agencies that support the best retail media networks across multiple regions, provide multi-channel services, and have a catalog of diverse creative assets.

Let’s get into it!

Want to understand exactly what retail media is before continuing? Check out our article on it.

15 Best Retail Media Agencies

Here’s what we consider to be the best retail media agencies:

1. Publicis Groupe

• Website: https://www.publicisgroupe.com/en/splash-en
• Location: 133, avenue des Champs-Élysées, 75008 Paris, France
• Core services: Connected TV & media, strategy, performance marketing, and content.
• Rating: 4.3/5 (G2)

Publicis Groupe was founded a hundred years ago and is one of the Big 3 advertising agencies in the world. Their proprietary CitrusAd platform (powered by Epsilon) is embedded into their retail media system for on-site and off-site activations.

They focus on closed-loop measurement and identity resolution, which means your campaigns will run on real purchase behavior.

They connect product, shopper, and media data to support full-funnel growth across global retail environments.

2. Omnicom

• Website: https://www.omc.com/
• Location: 280 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10017, USA
• Core services: Media, commerce, public relations, experiential advertising, branding, precision marketing
• Rating: 3.5/5 (DesignRush)

Omnicom merges commerce data, audience insights, and media execution with their proprietary Omni platform.

Their size allows them to buy retail media space from Retail Media Networks, which is why they can offer you tailored retail media packages over a broad range of media inventory.

They’re a great fit if you’re a big brand, but if you’re a smaller one, that size could hold you back, as senior members are likely to be unavailable with other projects.

3. 9AM

• Website: https://www.nine.am/industries/retail
• Location: 90 Broad St, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10004, United States
• Core services: Media buying, influencer marketing, creative strategy, analytics, growth strategy
• Rating: 4.9/5 (G2)

9AM engrains retail media into a full-funnel performance culture to drive online and in-store traffic.

With a multi-retailer offering, they can provide a 360-degree approach to your campaigns with your preferred RMN, from Walmart Connect to Target Roundel, or even TikTok Shop. 

With advanced targeting capabilities such as behavioural targeting, lookalike audiences, and remarketing, you can define the kind of audience you want, and significantly improve retention rates and the lifetime value of your new loyal base.

4. Clearwater Agency

• Website: https://clearwateragency.com.au/
• Location: Level 6/19 William St, Cremorne VIC 3121, Australia
• Core services: AI Search, content production, ecommerce, social media
• Rating: 4.7/5 (Sortlist)

Clearwater Agency focuses on e-commerce performance growth as their main retail media approach.

And while that can be a limit, it’s also an advantage. Due to their experience, they have an edge in using social media and understanding emerging trends over traditional retail outfits.

This helps them drive online retail media sales and e-commerce growth for brands efficiently and at scale.

5. MONSOON Agency

• Website: https://monsoon.agency/
• Location: MONSOON GmbH, Torstrasse 201, 10115 Berlin
• Core services: International expansion, content marketing, German expansion, GTM
• Rating: 4.9/5 (Clutch)

MONSOON Agency is a digital marketing agency based in Berlin, focused on helping brands enter the German and wider European retail media markets.

Being in one of Europe’s key commerce hubs gives them a practical advantage for executing and managing campaigns across the region. On top of that, they use their proprietary data warehouse, built on insights from €200M+ in past campaigns, to create more informed retail media strategies.

6. Savvy Marketing

• Website: https://www.getsavvy.com/
• Location: 79-81 Borough Rd, London. SE1 1DN.
• Core services: App display, in-store retail strategies, online media services
• Rating: 4.9/5 (Trustpilot)

Savvy Marketing is a retail media and strategy agency that specializes in moving shoppers along the buyer journey.

They use digital touchpoints, like in-app banners and push notifications, and in-store experiential campaigns to help brands succeed online and offline, and make it easy for customers to choose them at the moment of purchase. 

Their work speaks for itself, with the agency receiving awards for retail and indoor/outdoor shopper campaigns like their Robinsons X Wicked campaign and Pay Day for Adidas.

7. Searchbloom

• Website: https://www.searchbloom.com/
• Location: 10808 S. River Front Parkway, Suite #3116, South Jordan, UT 84095
• Core services: Digital analytics, CRO (Conversion Rate Optimization), Google Shopping
• Rating: 4.2/5 (Trustpilot)

Searchbloom has a “profit-first” philosophy to retail media. While they lean more on Amazon ads and Google Shopping, they align marketplace advertising with margin targets and revenue efficiency rather than top-line growth. 

They use their ACE framework (Assets, Control, and Experimentation) to fine-tune campaigns through keyword segmentation, bid management, and continuous testing, keeping performance tightly optimized across the funnel. 

It’s a strong setup for clear ROI and transparency, though larger brands may eventually outgrow the level of scale and resourcing a mid-sized agency can offer. 

8. Digital Masters

• Website: https://digital-masters.de/en/services
• Location: Landmark 7, Schützenstrasse 5, 22761 Hamburg
• Core services: Programmatic display ads, banner ads, Amazon advertising, digital advertising
• Rating: 4.8/5 (Sortlist)

Digital Masters is a German-based retail media agency with a specialty in Google and Microsoft (formerly Bing) Shopping.

By tracking the data, we see that Microsoft Shopping reaches highly active consumers, with 68% of its audience shopping monthly, and 45% of Bing searches are dominated by home goods and electronics terms.

They focus on data-driven campaign execution and cross-channel optimisation to help brands improve visibility, conversions, and overall performance across marketplaces and digital retail environments. 

9. Reload Digital

• Website: https://www.reloaddigital.co.uk/
• Location: The Typewriter Building, 140 Borough High St, London, SE1 1LB
• Core services: Brand marketing, customer lifecycle marketing, creative design
• Rating: N/A

Reload Digital noticed how brands with in-store retail history struggled to leap into digital channels, so they rolled up their sleeves and have helped over 500 brands become digital powerhouses.

With their omnichannel retail marketing mindset, they’ve elevated brands with performance marketing, email ads, and SEO.  This means that brands can then convert consumers directly from a retailer’s app, website, or any other digital ad spot.

10. VML

• Website: https://www.vml.com/
• Location: 3 World Trade Center, 175 Greenwich Street, Floors 32 & 33. New York, NY 10007
• Core services: Brand experience, omnichannel commerce, commerce platforms, commerce marketplaces
• Rating: 4.3/5 (Clutch)

VML executes end-to-end media strategies for businesses that want to deploy media assets through globally recognized channels.

Aside from their deep experience with the biggest retail media networks, we also like how they support retailers in building their own media networks, including advertiser acquisition and high-level strategy.

Their Unified AI Platform includes tools like Brand Guardian and Commerce Intelligence, designed to share insights and improve retail media performance across brands.

That said, they still see digital retail media as fragmented and unstandardized, which can make full omnichannel execution more complex despite their AI-driven approach.

11. Single Grain

• Website: https://www.singlegrain.com/
• Location: 707 Wilshire Blvd, Ste 3630, Los Angeles, CA 90017
• Core services: Spotify Ads, Hulu Ads, Amazon Ads, E-commerce SEO
• Rating: 4.8/5 (Clutch)

Single Grain is a digital retail advertising agency that offers retail media services via marketplaces like Amazon DSP and several established, diverse Retail Media Networks, including Spotify and Hulu.

The agency has a three-layered approach to retail growth that combines paid ads, conversion optimization, and SEO in every campaign. And because their deep cross-channel data informs campaign decisions, they can consistently A/B test creative, allowing them to optimize funnels alongside ads.

12. Alpha Digital

• Website: https://www.alphadigital.com.au/
• Location: Suite 1.06, Level 1, 100 Collins Street, Alexandria, NSW
• Core services: FMCG, WooCommerce, Big Commerce
• Rating: N/A

Alpha Digital relies on data modelling and predictive analytics to build out retail media campaigns. In that way, they can combine marketplace ads with attribution systems that correctly map the customer journey across relevant channels.

This distinction is important because while a starter agency may have a really basic, uniform attribution modelling technique, like relying on the first-click or last-click, Alpha Digital prioritizes contextual tracking. This means that all the responsible channels for conversion lift during a campaign are given the spotlight.

13. MMK Marketing

• Website: https://www.mmkmarketing.ca/
• Location: Suite 934, 1 Yonge St, Toronto, ON M5E 1E5, Canada
• Core services: Strategy development, fractional CMO,
• Rating: N/A

MMK Marketing is a woman-led agency that provides retail services via household North American RMNs like Walmart, Amazon, and Lowe’s.

Self-acclaimed as the “Retail Experience Agency”, they build campaigns around detailed journey mapping that covers everything from pre-purchase touchpoints to post-purchase behaviour. All of this further emphasizes their belief in “sell-through” campaigns, because without substantial retail readiness, retail ads just add to inventory costs.

This approach has delivered strong results, including a reported 15x ROI on Amazon programs and a clear impact on overall business performance. 

14. Medallion Retail

• Website: https://medallionretail.com/
• Location: 212.929.9130 New York, NY
• Core services: In-store signage, retail displays, concept retail, print production
• Rating: 5.0/5 (Clutch)

Medallion Retail handles everything from conceptual design to the logistics necessary for the nationwide rollout of in-store signage and retail display. 

They’ve chosen to create ‘owned’ media opportunities in brick-and-mortar environments over an omnichannel focus.

And using their proprietary “8 Distinct Shopper Typologies” research, they create widely successful campaigns like the semi-permanent display they did for Zwilling.

15. Propeller

• Website: https://www.propeller.co.uk/
• Location: 42 Colebrooke Row, London, N1 8AF
• Core services: AI SEO, kiosk innovation, paid media, CRO
• Rating: 4.9/5 (Clutch)

Propeller thinks outside the box when it comes to shaping the user experience. Aside from in-store experiences, they also correctly identified that digital experiences mimic stores for customers who may not be exposed to physical displays so often.

Armed with this knowledge, Propeller literally propels retail media through a brand-led growth strategy that integrates paid campaigns with digital experience design, content, and performance analytics. 

What Makes a Good Retail Media Agency Great

In analyzing what makes a good retail media agency, we wanted to focus strictly on their approach to retail media marketing, abandoning surface-level benefits like “Has great case studies”. Factors like that matter too, but here are the exclusive deciders for the retail media space:

Multi-network offering for retail media

With the major retail media networks being run by megastores, the behaviors of ‘legacy shoppers’ could have a greater effect on your campaign than you think.

For instance, Walmart shoppers stay in stores longer on visits and prioritize affordability. But your average Target-enjoyer is willing to pay a slight premium, and even though they also enjoy browsing, they care more about faster checkouts than Walmart customers.

This can translate to how each crowd interacts with your brand, making it that much more pressing to work with agencies with a sizable suite ranging from Amazon Advertising to Walmart Connect and Target Roundel.

Understanding of the shopper journey

The best retail marketing agencies map out the buyer journey from awareness to decision and even beyond that to post-purchase brand engagement, often integrating loyalty program data to improve retention.

This includes understanding consumer mindsets, customer experience, and how users move across omnichannel touchpoints.

There’s no one-size-fits-all when it comes to executing retail media strategies, so we advise you to work with an agency that:

• Knows your ideal audiences
• Uses consumer behavior insights for campaigns, and 
• Models your entire marketing framework around your real-time shopper data.

Innovative and adaptable to tech dynamism

Retail media has seen the most changes to what works in recent times, with shifts in how consumers interact with ads, algorithms, and tech.

Innovative retail media agencies study the patterns and experiment with emerging trends constantly, so they stay head and shoulders above their clients’ competitors.

Data-led decision making

The driving factor of the rebirth of retail media is the ability to tie retail spend directly to how much revenue brands reel in, and any good retail media agency should know how to do this. 

What separates a good retail media agency from an amazing one is knowing how to track the effect of your marketing dollars on the customer lifetime value, clickthrough rates, conversion rates, and other engagement metrics.

This is why we suggest you check how detailed the reporting structure of the agency you’re considering working with is.

Brand alignment and emotional customer connection

Retail media has evolved so far beyond impersonal banner ads and just shouting your services in the boldest colors.

Retail media engagement now is about:

• The relationship brands can foster with their audiences, and 
• Maintaining those relationships through communities.

One way savvy retail media agencies keep and maintain these authentic bonds is through influencer marketing collaborations that encourage community building and engagement within micro-influencers’ audiences.

Converting through creativity

Another way to build authentic bonds with retail media is masterful storytelling. With the shift in retail media to vertical style content, retail marketing agencies need to tell stories that move audiences to take action.

And even in situations where it’s just a brand campaign, brand recall is more powerful than many analysts think, because it eventually converts to online and even foot traffic.

Conclusion

As we round out this guide, we have to remind you that there is no universal “best” retail media agency, only the best fit for your specific brand identity, margins, and growth goals.

The right partner depends on where your constraints are. And that could be anything, from acquisition costs, inventory, creative, or attribution clarity.

So before committing to any agency, settle on what you really want.

9AM works with brands to diagnose retail media inefficiencies like these, align spend with true business metrics, and build scalable growth systems.

Book a strategy call to discuss your current setup and expose where your bottleneck lies. So you can start plugging it up with omnichannel strategies that bring in those conversions.

FAQs

What services do retail media agencies offer? 

Retail media agencies traditionally offer in-store and display marketing services, including local store marketing, in-store activations, and digital advertising. They also provide social media marketing, e-commerce optimization, brand and digital marketing, and creative production services to help brands improve offline and online sales.

How much does a typical retail media agency charge?

In general, retail marketing agencies charge anywhere from $50 - $300 per hour for their services. For larger-scale productions and campaigns (e.g., creative + media buying), they’d charge on retainer, and upfront fees could range anywhere from $1000 - $20,000.

Why should retailers work with retail media agencies instead of running campaigns in-house?

Because of media buying costs. Agencies can often secure better rates through ongoing partnerships and consistent campaign volume. Agencies also bring industry expertise and up-to-date knowledge of retail media trends, something that would be expensive and hard to replicate in-house without stretching your budget.

Appendix

1. MarketingLTB: https://marketingltb.com/blog/statistics/bing-statistics/
2. S360 Digital: https://s360digital.com/news/s360-acquires-reload-digital-in-the-uk/
3. MMCG Invest: https://www.mmcginvest.com/post/walmart-vs-target-an-analytical-comparison-of-two-american-retail-giants
4. PRNews: https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/omnicom-reports-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2025-results-302691987.html

In a market like New York, with over 40,000 Amazon sellers, it’s not easy to stand out.

It gets doubly hard when your whole strategy rests on the same PPC ads everyone else is doing.

Advertising in the Big Apple, and eventually taking a bite of its $51 billion e-commerce market revenue cap, calls for an integrated marketing approach that only the best Amazon advertising agencies can provide.

Agencies that use integrated advertising will mix in elements of organic discovery, sponsored ads, and brand authority-building into one big melting pot. This’ll make it easier for your target audience to identify your products from the slew of options Amazon gives them.

This guide will highlight the 9 best Amazon marketing agencies in New York, and what to look out for before committing to any one of them.

*Disclaimer: Yes, we included ourselves in this list. We evaluated 9AM using the same criteria as the other agencies and will cover both strengths and limitations objectively so you can decide if they’re a fit. 

How We Vet the Best Amazon Advertising Agencies for NYC

We vet the best Amazon ad agencies like any true New Yorker vets a good New York Slice. 

We look beneath the apparent similarities to analyze what makes them tick and how they meet Amazon’s many, many demands with their skill sets.

Most brands would think an Amazon campaign is won when sales are made, but that’s not the whole picture.

So yes, we naturally reviewed agency case studies for highlights of your typical conversion metrics, such as ACoS (Advertising Cost of Sale), which is similar to a basic ROAS. But for Amazon, it was more important for us to look at the true cost of a sale with TACoS (Total Advertising Cost of Sale), which is the ratio of ad spend to all sales (paid and organic), and blended ROAS.

And then beyond that, we looked at agencies that can activate your full-funnel strategies with Amazon DSP (Demand Side Platform). We’ll talk more about this tool later, but it essentially lets you meet customers earlier in the user journey. So you outpace the competition with more visible brand awareness.

We also made sure all agencies on our list have a New York base of operations or at least a strong presence there, since this makes localization and in-person strategy meetings easier to manage. 

Other Amazon-winning qualities in all the agencies you’ll read about below are:

• Clear reporting and communication style
• Expertise in integrated ad strategies
• A dynamic team for pivoting quickly and creative velocity

9 Best Amazon Advertising Agencies in New York

There’s a generous number of Amazon ad agencies in New York. And there’s even a lot more, if you want to count PPC-only agencies that offer Amazon services on the side. 

Because of that very point, we’ve sifted through them all to bring you the Amazon agencies best at increasing revenue and profitability while also meeting your brand awareness goals.

Incrementum

• Website: https://incrementumdigital.com/
• Location:  416 Langley Ave, West Hempstead, New York, 11552
• Core services: Amazon advertising management, Amazon DSP management, creator connections, brand management, and Walmart advertising management.
• Rating: 4.7/5 (Trustpilot)

Incrementum is a full-funnel NYC advertising agency that specializes in retail marketing. We like that they use data-driven PPC and DSP execution hand-in-hand, so they don’t isolate campaign management.

They help brands reach their desired New York audiences with their proprietary platform, DataOwl analytics. This system brings TACoS, audience overlap, and growth opportunities into a single dashboard. It’s no wonder clients like Samsonite, Super Mario Galaxy, and the Martha Stewart brand trust the agency with their Amazon activations.

They’ve also been nominated for Amazon Partner awards multiple times, even winning one. 

Envision Horizon

• Website: https://www.envisionhorizons.com/
• Location:  147 W 25th St, 5th Floor, New York, NY 10001
• Core services: Amazon advertising, Amazon growth, Amazon DSP, Amazon Marketing Cloud, retail media marketplaces, performance accelerators.
• Rating: 4.9/5 (Clutch)

Envision Horizons doesn’t follow the script you’d expect from a marketing firm in any niche because they focus on the business level first. To them, Amazon advertising is an extension of your retail operations, so they use your business goals as a North Star for your advertising goals.

Their proprietary myHorizons platform is great from that POV because it connects ad performance with inventory, SEO, and buy box data. What this means is you get campaigns that are adjusted in real time based on stock risk, keyword movement, and profitability signals. In the City that never sleeps, creative velocity at that scale is everything.

9AM

• Website: https://nine.am/
• Location: 90 Broad St, 2nd Floor, New York, NY 10004
• Core services: Amazon DSP, Advanced Amazon targeting, lookalike audiences, remarketing,  brand store integration, smart bidding optimization, and video creative.
• Rating: 4.9/5 (G2)

9AM runs Amazon advertising within a broader attribution system that connects your marketplace performance with paid media outside Amazon. 

You need this when Amazon isn’t your only growth channel. For example, discovery might happen on TikTok, while the actual purchase happens on Amazon.

A clear example is EVRY Jewels. 9AM managed a $1M media budget and built a high-volume creative testing system across channels, helping scale the brand from $6M to $100M in annual revenue.

One drawback is that this model relies on clean tracking and sufficient spend. Smaller brands or teams without solid data may struggle to get meaningful insights from it.

Beyond Media Global

• Website: https://www.bmgww.com/
• Location:  One World Trade Center, 66th Floor, New York, NY 10007
• Core services: First-party research, AI-powered SEO, Agentic Artificial Intelligence, performance media, web development.
• Rating: 3.9/5 (Trustpilot)

Beyond Media Global uses agentic AI to activate first-party data inside Amazon’s ecosystem. Basically, the agency connects your CRM data to audience building, bidding logic, and campaign segmentation.

This shows up through Amazon DSP and AMC, where customer data can be mapped into audiences for retargeting, lookalikes, and lifecycle-based messaging. That means they optimize campaigns around actual purchase behavior and customer value.

So they help you move from basic Sponsored Ads optimization to a more audience-driven model that supports both acquisition and retention.

That’s why they are an official Amazon Ads Partner with a foothold in what makes bids tick on the platform.

Acadia

• Website: https://acadia.io/services/retail-media-marketplaces/amazon-ppc-advertising/ 
• Location:  26 Broadway, Ste 846, New York, NY 10004
• Core services: Amazon PPC management, Amazon DSP and AMC audience targeting, campaign structuring and bid automation, full-funnel retail media strategy.
• Rating: 4.8/5 (Clutch)

Acadia does Amazon PPC and retail media, and works across Sponsored Ads, DSP, and AMC. They have the experience for all that too, as they’ve been active on Amazon since 2015. 

Campaigns are built around clear goals, whether that’s market share or profitability, and supported by tools like Pacvue for bidding, keyword harvesting, and dayparting. They also layer in proprietary reporting to track your performance every day and adjust when you need.

Apart from ads, Acadia can help you with content, operations, and external traffic. However, one limitation is that their setup can feel heavy for smaller brands without enough spend or data to support it.

Podean

• Website: https://podean.com/ 
• Location:  1216 Broadway, Floor 2, New York, NY 10001, USA
• Core services: Amazon PPC management, global marketplace benchmarking, media efficiency analysis (WOAS), cross-market performance reporting, category and competitor insights.
• Rating: N/A

Podean has a data-heavy approach to Amazon performance. The agency built its own benchmarking tools, like the Marketplace Index™, which analyzes thousands of brands across categories and regions to show where you stand and where you’re losing ground.

So Podean looks at broader signals like content quality, retail readiness, customer sentiment, and media efficiency. Their WOAS (Waste of Ad Spend) framework highlights inefficiencies in budget allocations and how they’re used across campaigns.

If you’re operating across multiple markets and need a clearer view of performance, you’ll genuinely appreciate that. Of course, this can feel overly analytical for smaller teams that just need straightforward PPC execution.

Thrive Internet Marketing Agency

• Website: https://thriveagency.com/
• Location:  626 Cole Ave, Suite 488, Dallas, Texas 75204
• Core services: Amazon SEO, Amazon PPC, Amazon Storefront & Branding, Amazon seller consulting, Amazon posts management, Amazon DSP advertising management.
• Rating: 4.6/5 (Clutch)

Thrive Internet Marketing Agency’s whole thing is maintaining profitability controls at the campaign level.

As proof, they combine manual and automated targeting with the kind of full-funnel ad strategies designed to capture audiences on and off Amazon to improve profit margins. 

By doing this, they tie execution tightly to Amazon-relevant performance metrics, so that even your Sponsored Product ads won’t waste ad spend when you’re trying to scale visibility.

Their expertise in pairing certified execution with an Amazon growth system centered around sales is the main reason they’ve had 7 consecutive Inc. 5000 placements.

Olifant Digital

• Website: https://olifantdigital.com/ 
• Location:  1412 Broadway 21st Floor, New York City, New York 10018, United States
• Core services: Amazon PPC management, account restructuring, performance creative, cross-channel paid media, conversion rate optimization.
• Rating: 5/5 (Clutch)

Olifant Digital is great if you’re looking for someone who operates like an extension of your internal team. They handle Amazon, but also do paid media, creative, and retention. That’s an asset if you’re scaling across channels.

Of course, if you’re looking for a deep Amazon-only strategy (DSP, AMC, etc.), their offering may feel less specialized.

So let’s look at exactly what they can help you with, Amazon-wise. Here, we can say they’re very hands-on with daily PPC optimization, account restructuring, and regular A/B testing. Plus, they’re fast, especially in creative testing and campaign iteration. In other words, they’re great for PPC Amazon ads.

Emplicit

• Website: https://emplicit.co/
• Location:  224 West 35th Street, Suite 500 PMB 215, New York, NY 10001
• Core services: Full-service management, content creation, brand protection, and logistics and margin optimization.
• Rating: 4.8/5 (DesignRush)

Emplicit is an eCommerce advertising agency that specializes in Amazon and TikTok Shop ads. Their approach to eCommerce marketing is built around retail-readiness signals that tie your campaign levers to inventory levels, pricing, and the diversity in your catalog. 

Plus, they use proprietary reporting systems like Stonehenge and FlatFilePro that show Seller and Vendor data through a consolidated lens. Therefore, your Sponsored Ads and DSP campaigns can be adjusted against real-time profitability and operational limits.

This dedication shows why they’ve been trusted by companies like General Mills, Trudog, and Oasis. The New York agency has also managed over $100 million in ad spend for more than 40,000 unique products, which shows their focus on scaling their clients’ revenue efficiently.

How to Choose a Good Amazon Advertising Agency in New York

We’ve looked at scenarios, but what’s the basis you should use when deciding on the right Amazon advertising agency for your B2B or B2C storefront? You can start with these:

Compare DSP Capabilities

As we said earlier in this guide, Amazon DSP activates full-funnel strategies and brand awareness campaigns in ways that the Sponsored Ads feature simply cannot do on its own.

Top New York Amazon agencies use DSP’s programmatic display to reach customers a lot earlier in the customer journey. And then combine that feature with advanced retargeting to double down on browsers that haven’t converted.

Your entire marketing ecosystem benefits from this, too. Because even your promoted ads look familiar to customers, and convert higher now.

Side note: Of course, simple Amazon ads can sometimes be enough. If you’re early-stage or have a small catalog, well-structured Sponsored Ads can drive consistent growth. Focus on keywords, bids, and listings before adding DSP or complex attribution layers. 

Prioritize Total Advertising Cost of Sale (TACoS) over just Advertising Cost of Sale (ACoS)

ACoS is like basic Return-On-Ad-Spend (ROAS), or at least the inverse of it. Agencies can just bid on one less keyword to lower spend and call it a day. From where we’re standing, that just looks like they’re running scared.

In our experience, TACoS is the better metric because it measures your advertising efforts against total sales, including organic ones too.

So, if, for example, you manage to improve ACoS from 29% to 24%, that wouldn’t mean much if your listings don’t convert at the industry average, bringing total revenue down. But when the TACoS reduces with ad spend staying at the same level, you know* your advertising is building incremental lift.

* Disclaimer: TACoS doesn’t automatically prove “incremental lift, though” it’s a good proxy for it. We just like to be rhetorical sometimes.

We recommend asking agencies you’ve shortlisted about their TACoS policy. If they raise an eyebrow at you or can’t fully explain the link between paid marketing and organic growth, they may not be the one.

Advanced Bidding Management 

Basic keyword research and bidding admin is the standard in a city with high concentrations of Amazon sellers like New York. In fact, Brooklyn alone houses 4% of all Amazon sellers in the United States. That’s effectively a seller for every 10,000 residents.

What you need is an agency that (at the very least):

• Offers reverse keyword automation by blocking the unprofitable search terms, and
• Dayparting that lets you bid by the hour.

These two are huge in New York because overnight wasted ad spend can suppress your marketing, making it next to impossible to take advantage of trends.

We’ve also found that the best New York Amazon agencies can create custom audiences for your DSP campaigns.

Consider Retention Rates

Retention rates tend to hover around the 70% point for Amazon agencies.

This means that if an agency is operating above that point, they have more satisfied customers with successful campaigns than most.

You can find some agencies' retention rates front and center on their websites, but we’ve noticed that you get a better picture when you just directly ask for specific numbers or references.

Transparency Reporting with a New York Track Record of Results

Even if you’re completely giving an Amazon advertising agency the reins to your marketing operations, you should still get complete campaign data, with all the information they use in making your key decisions.

We aren’t endorsing micro-managing, of course, but being in the dark on things like your keyword performance can be scary. More so, when you consider that only 44% of marketers analyze campaign performance weekly.

So make sure the agency has a reporting and communication style that suits you.

They should also clearly provide you with status reports and have case studies that definitively tell you their results in New York.

Their Integration of Amazon AI

With Amazon embracing AI implementation and even investing heavily in it, any agency worth their salt should easily answer when you ask about how they optimize for Rufus (Amazon’s chatty shopping assistant).

Traditional methods still have their place, but if an agency isn’t at least aware of recent developments, it means they’re optimizing for a system that no longer exists in some ways.

Connecting Organic and Paid Channels

An integrated approach to marketing on Amazon is the holy grail for getting past competition and breaking through when your sales plateau.

Many Amazon ad agencies have zero visibility into your TikTok shop, your website, and your Meta and Google ads. This makes it a big ask to correctly attribute the attention and conversions you get on Amazon to the channels that caused them.

So, a New York agency that treats Amazon like a vital cog in a much larger wheel of connected platforms, each part of a specific messaging ladder, is a guaranteed way to win in advertising in 2026.

Defining Your Marketing Scope: The Difference Between a Dedicated Amazon Agency and a General Paid Ads Agency

A paid ad agency and an Amazon ad agency will offer one or two similar services to your brand for the New York market, like:

• Campaign management, 
• Budget allocation, and 
• Performance tracking.

So wouldn’t I just want to stick with a PPC-only agency, you ask?

From our experience, you should not.

For starters, a general PPC agency will typically only do Sponsored Ads on Amazon. Conversely, the best Amazon agencies in New York have each stage of Amazon advertising down pat. This includes:

• Sponsored advertising
• Amazon DSP
• Listing optimization and separate bid management
• Frequent Amazon storefront updating
• Branded awareness through creative content

This means that while a typical paid agency will reach a ceiling once paid efficiency is maximized, an Amazon ad agency can take you higher with organic integration and retail optimization. The best Amazon-integrated agencies also use strategies that take advantage of every stage of the funnel to compound your growth across multiple channels.

And let's not even get into how even the best PPC-only agencies have limited Amazon-native insight. As we saw in the last chapter, this creates blind spots that make it hard for them to leverage cross-channel data or properly attribute incrementality to your creative on other platforms like TikTok Shop.

Full-service and integrated Amazon agencies don’t have this problem. They use TACoS, customer lifetime value, and blended CAC/ROAS to get full visibility into how Amazon's performance influences total business growth.

So, unless your goal is immediate results, with nothing more than a few quick sales, you can go for a PPC-only agency.

But for sustained conversions, LTV, and healthy brand recall, working with an Amazon marketing agency is the better fit for your e-commerce business.

Conclusion

Selling on Amazon in New York means competing in a crowded market where visibility, conversion, and efficiency all affect growth. 

Brands that scale are the ones that make strong decisions across advertising, creative, and retail execution, then adjust quickly when their performance dips (or improves!). 

That’s why you need to choose the right agency. 

Get on a strategy call with us today to get a detailed audit of your present Amazon performance setup.

And start seeing why we have a rap sheet as tall as the Empire State (figuratively, of course, have you seen the size of that building?)

FAQs

How long does it take to start seeing results with an Amazon advertising agency in New York?

You’ll usually see early signals in a few weeks, like better click-through rates or lower wasted spend. Real results, like stable growth and improved profitability, take closer to 2–3 months as data builds and optimizations compound. 

How Do New York Amazon Agencies Handle High CPC in Competitive Categories?

Good Amazon agencies improve listings and creatives before fighting higher bids. That way, you’re not overpaying for traffic that doesn’t convert. And in the long run, it’s what leads to better conversion rates and targeting, and supports your ads.

Does Organic SEO Still Matter if I’m Running Paid Ads? 

Yes, and it often makes your ads cheaper. Strong organic rankings improve conversion rates and reduce reliance on paid traffic. Ads can drive visibility, but SEO is what helps you sustain performance in the long haul. 

How Do I Know When I’ve Outgrown In-house Amazon Management?

If growth stalls, your budget keeps increasing with few results, or you’re missing visibility into what’s actually driving performance - these are all red flags. However, most in-house setups struggle to connect ads, listings, and strategy at scale. Luckily, there are plenty of good Amazon ad agencies to choose from.