The Incrementality Advantage: Why Top Brands Are Rethinking Media Measurement

How do you know your marketing campaigns are working to grow your brand? 

The only way to know whether your campaigns are effective is to measure and analyze the results. Measurement and attribution let you see which channels are most effective, which touchpoints are driving conversions, and which campaigns have the greatest impact. You need this information to make data-driven decisions about future campaign strategies and effective budget allocation. 

Traditionally, brands relied on basic media measurement metrics, such as ROAS. Today, they can do better than that with incrementality. The better your media measurement is, the better your campaigns will be, so discover how to use incrementality to your advantage. 

Why Traditional Attribution Is Losing Ground

In the past, companies have often focused heavily on metrics from the marketing platforms they use. The problem is that platform metrics often fail to tell the full story of a campaign’s performance. They may employ last-click logic, attributing all the credit for a conversion to the last touchpoint customers engaged with beforehand¹. Analyzing campaigns in this way overlooks the many other touchpoints that may have played a role in each conversion.

Even multi-touch attribution models, which track user interactions across multiple touchpoints, have their limits. The increasing prevalence of privacy regulations and widespread use of ad blockers can create data gaps in models that lead to inaccurate results². You may see conflicting stories when looking at multi-touch attribution, platform, and marketing mix modeling dashboards because they’re all limited in their measurements. 

Increasingly, brand leaders are rethinking their media measurement strategies. They’re looking toward approaches like incrementality that provide the data-backed insights they need to make better marketing decisions. Incrementality isn’t just a measurement fix, though. It’s a strategic tool that can help guide more effective media planning and budgeting. 

What Incrementality Testing Actually Measures (and Why It Matters)

Incrementality testing measures the incremental revenue your marketing campaigns generate. These tests give you a more confident assessment of how much additional revenue your business earned by running a specific campaign³ or the impact of holding out on certain tactics. 

You’re not just looking at basic metrics, like clicks or impressions. You’re measuring the impact of your marketing efforts on actual business outcomes, such as revenue, customer lifetime value, and orders. 

Using incrementality testing will also provide clarity on the question of causality versus correlation³. Did the media actually drive lift, or were other factors responsible? With incrementality testing, you’ll know. 

Brands can apply incrementality testing in many ways, but some of the key use cases include:

• Justifying your marketing spending with statistical evidence
• Optimizing your marketing channel mix
• Measuring the return on investment from creative

Inside Preferred Partner Haus’ Approach to Testing

Socium partners with Haus, an incrementality testing platform, to help shape brands’ marketing strategies. The platform makes marketing into a science, measuring the precise business impact of a brand’s advertising efforts to inform smarter decision-making.  

It’s not enough to just run tests on convenient samples and hope your results are accurate. Haus produces statistically rigorous results you can trust with stratified random sampling and synthetic controls. Within the testing methodology, there are allowances for smaller holdouts of 10 to 20% to allow for faster, low-risk experimentation without compromising statistical validity. 

The platform is also very flexible in the kinds of tests you can run. Whether you’re interested in 2-cell or 3-cell tests, testing spending increases and decreases, or creative variant testing, Haus can support the experiments. API integrations with Meta, Google, and TikTok enable DMA-level geographic tests for even more insights. A typical test cadence with Haus is two to four tests per month, each with a duration of two to three weeks. 

Strategic Insights That Go Beyond ROAS

Return on ad spend used to be the default metric for assessing campaign performance. Brands compared their ROAS to vanity benchmarks and measured their success based on whether they surpassed those figures. 

Whether or not your campaigns clear these benchmarks, ROAS has significant limitations that make it difficult to understand your marketing performance and the actions you can take to drive better results. It’s time to dig deeper than ROAS into metrics that reveal more actionable insights about your campaigns. 

IROAS

A simple tweak to the ROAS calculation gives you one crucial metric that’s much more useful: incremental return on ad spend. IROAS measures the revenue a specific campaign drives relative to the amount you spend on that campaign⁴. Just divide incremental revenue by media spend to get your IROAS. 

In the IROAS vs ROAS comparison, IROAS offers better insights because it only considers revenue generated specifically due to the campaign, ignoring baseline sales. You’re isolating the true financial impact of your campaigns with IROAS. 

You might be surprised by what you find when calculating IROAS. Haus’ own testing has shown that upper funnel marketing efforts can generate more incremental revenue than lower funnel marketing relative to ad spend. 

Granular Views

Being able to see the big picture of your marketing efforts is vital to long-term success, but you also need to be able to take a closer look at each component of your campaigns. Better testing makes that possible. 

With incrementality testing, you can gain granular views into your campaigns, such as comparing the new versus repeat customer lifts and their effect on revenue⁵. Similarly, omni-channel attribution testing will help you understand the impact of each touchpoint across channels. These insights make it easier to adjust your campaigns to drive more conversions and get the best results for your investment. 

Retesting

As useful as one round of paid media incrementality testing can be, those insights likely won’t be applicable forever. It’s worthwhile to retest periodically to make sure you’re working with accurate, up-to-date information about the incremental revenue your campaigns will drive. 

In evolving media environments, Haus advises retesting your key media channels at least two to three times per year to account for market changes. 

Why Incrementality Should Guide Your 2025 Media Planning

Incrementality testing isn’t about justifying your previous marketing spending. Instead, use testing to take a forward look and validate your budgets for the rest of the year and beyond. 

You’ll be able to identify the points when scaling up your campaigns will provide diminishing incremental returns on your ad spend. Using insights from your incrementality testing, you can reallocate your marketing budget with precision to ensure you’re getting the best results from your investment. 

Brands often deal with a lot of internal debate about how best to allocate marketing dollars, and incrementality testing can reduce that noise. You’ll have a statistical footing for all the marketing budget decisions you make going forward. 

Socium’s POV on Incrementality as a Differentiator

Even the best marketers on the planet don’t instinctively know the exact channels and marketing strategies that will provide optimal results for each client. The only way to determine exactly what works best is through testing. 

However, the type of testing you conduct matters. The right testing is worth its weight in gold for the insights it offers. That’s why we’re investing in structured testing roadmaps for clients. Incrementality testing isn’t just a retrospective metric to understand previous campaigns. It’s an essential tool brands can use as a proactive planning input to make more informed media allocation decisions. Brands that implement incrementality testing will be ahead of the game when it comes to creating data-backed, impactful advertising campaigns. 

Curious about the difference proactive testing and media measurement can make for your campaigns? Let’s talk.

FAQs About Incrementality Testing

What is incrementality testing and how is it different from ROAS?

Incrementality isolates the true causal impact of media (the revenue you wouldn’t have earned otherwise) while ROAS can be inflated by existing demand or flawed attribution.

How much media spend do I need to run an incrementality test?

While thresholds vary by channel, most statistically valid tests start at roughly $500K/month in spend per channel, or $10M+/year across 3 or more platforms.

How long does a typical test run and what kind of results can I expect?

Most tests run for two to four weeks. You’ll get a full lift analysis, IROAS by channel or campaign, and breakdowns like new vs. repeat customer impact.

Is incrementality testing only for Meta or can it include Amazon, TikTok, and retail?

With platforms like Haus, you can test full-funnel impact across DTC, Amazon, and retail, all within a single framework using geo-holdouts.

Sources

1. (17 April 2025). The Hidden Pitfalls of ROAS: Why Move to iROAS Marketing. Keen. Retrieved June 16, 2025, from https://keends.com/blog/roas-and-performance-marketers/
2. (11 October 2023). What’s wrong with multi-touch attribution? SegmentStream. Retrieved June 16, 2025, from https://segmentstream.com/glossary/multi-touch-attribution-alternatives
3. Chen, C. (18 September 2024). Understanding incrementality: The key to measuring a campaign’s true impact. Criteo. Retrieved June 16, 2025, from https://www.criteo.com/blog/understanding-incrementality/
4. Leeflang, J. (21 May 2025). Understanding Incremental ROAS vs. ROAS for Marketers. Incrmntal. Retrieved June 16, 2025, from https://www.incrmntal.com/resources/understanding-incremental-roas-vs-roas-for-marketers
5. Vinogradov, R. (30 May 2025). What Is Incrementality in Marketing? Guide 2025. Improvado. Retrieved June 16, 2025, from https://improvado.io/blog/incrementality-guide