New Customer Acquisition with RTB House Acquisition

What is a new-to-file customer, and why does it matter?

RTB House defines this solution as getting the first conversion from someone not yet in your customer file (new-to-file). Simple on paper, it is the most debated point in practice. Does someone who visited your site before but never bought count as new? What about someone who bought in a store but has no online order? We settle this definition in writing with the RTB House team before the campaign opens, because the acquisition cost you see in reports depends entirely on it.

To apply the definition, we add new vs. existing customer status to the purchase event in the tag and, where possible, remove existing buyers from the campaign with a KVKK-compliant (Türkiye's personal data protection law) hashed email list. If the list cannot be shared, we at least separate users with a recent order from tag data and state this limitation clearly in reports.

What we watch in a multi-touch acquisition journey

Few people buy from an unfamiliar brand at the first ad, especially for mid and upper-priced products. So Acquisition reaches the user several times, at different moments and on different pages, while a deep learning model tries to predict who will complete the journey. For this setup to work well, we check the following:

• A selection that introduces the category in early touchpoints, then the product group the user showed interest in
• A logo and a short promise that say who the brand is at first glance
• The user leaves this campaign as soon as they reach the site and moves into the retargeting setup
• A limited number of touchpoints; showing the same banner dozens of times to a stranger hurts the brand
• Unwanted content categories written into the brief, so IntentGPT prioritizes users reading product-related content

Where RTB House Acquisition fits next to Meta, Google and Criteo

Most brands already have Meta Advantage+ and Google Performance Max for finding new customers. We see Acquisition as a complementary channel next to them: an audience reached with product-led ads on news and content sites, outside social and search. If a Criteo Commerce Audiences new customer campaign runs in the same period, we do not open both at once; the two DSPs compete for the same user and it becomes impossible to tell which one brought the new customer.

First order or customer value?

RTB House provides insights showing the most valuable new customers and the best-performing publishers and creatives. We combine these with order data: we track the first order value, return rate and second order within 60-90 days for customers coming from Acquisition as a cohort. We run this analysis in BigQuery by customer ID and set the campaign's acquisition cost target based on this repeat purchase data, not on the first order's profit.

Acquisition: when do we recommend it?

How we manage Acquisition

1. New customer definitionWe agree in writing with RTB House how site visitors, store buyers and past buyers are counted.
2. Customer separationWe add new customer status to the purchase event and exclude existing buyers with a hashed list.
3. Product selectionWe label best sellers in the feed to feature in early touchpoints.
4. DSP overlap checkWe pause or separate other DSP new customer campaigns that could overlap with Acquisition.
5. First and second orderWe track first order value, returns and second orders of Acquisition customers in a separate cohort.

Acquisition: metrics and requirements

The Brand Move RTB House Team

To learn more about Acquisition or other RTB House ad formats, contact The Brand Move RTB House team today.

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