As a result, while clicks are easy to measure, they don’t always reflect true conversions or the full impact of advertising. Yet many marketers still rely on outdated measurement approaches like last-click attribution that miss out on what’s driving business impact and overvalue lower-funnel activities like search. In fact, over one-third (35%) of ad spend based on last-click measurement is wasted, according to data from Analytic Partners.

So, where does this leave advertisers? The answer for many companies lies in measuring and optimizing for incrementality. Incrementality measurement captures the true causal impact of advertising, allowing brands to more efficiently invest in the channels that are actually creating demand — even when that demand happens earlier in the customer journey. Companies that prioritize this approach limit the possibility of crediting conversions to the wrong channel.

How incrementality gauges digital ads’ true effectiveness

Incrementality is the measure of value generated by a marketing investment, beyond what would have happened without it. “An incremental result is one that you can prove happened because of your actions. In other words, if you hadn’t done the marketing, would anything have happened? Ideally, the answer is no,” Meta CMO Alex Schultz explained.

For Meta, incrementality is a key part of how the company talks to marketers. In fact, it’s so important to Schultz that it’s one of the primary topics in his recent book, “Click Here: The Art and Science of Digital Marketing and Advertising,” and it’s something he has talked about in depth on channels like LinkedIn. 

Many businesses are aligned on this. For example, Ridge Wallet has made incrementality a cornerstone of how the company thinks about advertising decisions. “Marketing is our biggest line item — more than people, more than product,” according to Ridge Wallet CEO Sean Frank. “We need marketing to perform or we don’t make money, and incrementality has proven to be the gold standard for identifying and scaling our highest performing ad dollars.”

Matt Casciani, marketing director at activewear brand Rhoback, called incrementality studies the brand’s “north star” in terms of quantifying the impact and value of marketing. Rhoback uses a combination of Meta’s Conversion Lift studies conducted on a monthly basis and GeoLift studies conducted on a quarterly basis to measure the incrementality of the brand’s marketing tactics.

Meanwhile, the team at Ridge Wallet aims to conduct tests that measure incrementality a minimum of four times per quarter.

“We look at the incremental lift in sales in the regions we’re targeting to understand the value a given marketing strategy is generating,” Connor MacDonald, Ridge Wallet’s CMO, said.

For Ridge’s marketing strategy, “incrementality is the compass. The readouts … give you the clearest view of true impact,” MacDonald added. “Incrementality has become the default measurement, and it has eaten the lunch of last click and post purchase. The only rival it has is MTA — but one’s a compass and one’s a map. You need both.”

So, in other words, incrementality is ideal for strategic decisions, including cross-channel budget decisions, and multi-touch attribution can assist with day-to-day budget decisions (especially when calibrated with incrementality measurement).

When trying to actually measure incrementality, many in digital marketing frame it as running regular experiments to check attribution against what’s incremental to ensure accuracy.

“You should measure everything, because all channels can perform, and the best way to understand the impact of each channel is through running experiments,” Schultz said. “Experimentation allows you to understand the incremental results you are driving, both overall as a program, and for the last dollar you spent, which is generally less impactful than the first dollar.”

Implementing incrementality and a hybrid approach to measurement

When looking at how to implement incrementality, some marketers choose to view it like a ladder: Attribution is the bottom rung of the ladder, followed by modeling in the middle. Experimentation is at the top of the ladder and is the pinnacle of measuring incrementality.

Marketers who climb all the way up aren’t just collecting data points — they’re making sharper decisions, avoiding wasted spend and proving the true value of every channel. But they also need tools to do this accurately.

“The fundamental expectation we have for partners and tools is to provide tests that adhere to a rigorous and unbiased scientific design. Beyond that, we lean on them to support us in developing testing roadmaps and interpret or action on the results of our tests,” Casciani said. “There is an inherent opportunity cost of running any A/B test, so we can’t afford to start running a test that is flawed by design — but even more so, we can’t afford to be making decisions off of bad data.”

For Ridge, the keys to achieving incremental measurement are tools that are easy to use, the ability to run multi-cell tests and the ability to run tests quickly and back-to-back.

“The industry has changed on this a lot, from last click to MMM to now incrementality,” Frank said. “It all stems from advertising getting harder and dollars being fewer and further between.”

“Marketing measurement is both an art and a science,” Casciani added. “The best we can do as marketers is use some combination of tools (MTAs, A/B tests, surveys, MMMs) to triangulate and validate the impact of our marketing dollars.”

The result of this hybrid measurement approach is more effective and impactful marketing — and the ability to quantify this effectiveness and impact.

Partner insights from Meta