Frequently Asked Questions

  • Incrementality is the sales your advertising caused, beyond what would have happened anyway. If a shopper was going to buy your product regardless, the ad they saw right before checkout didn't create that sale, even if the platform credits it. Measuring incrementality and optimizing for it is what Incremental is built to do. It's also where the name comes from.

  • Incremental works across the major retail and commerce media networks, plus the channels brands use to drive retail sales:

    • Amazon: DSP, Sponsored Ads, Seller Central and Vendor Central

    • Walmart: Walmart Connect, Walmart Marketplace and 1P sales

    • Target: Roundel Kiosk, Roundel Media Studio, Target Ads via Criteo, and retail sales

    • Ulta Beauty: Ulta Advertising via Criteo

    • Delivery and commerce: DoorDash, Instacart and Shopify

    • Search, social and programmatic: Google Ads, Google Display & Video 360, Meta, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok Ads and TikTok Shop

    Everything lands in one standardized view, so campaigns can be compared across retailers on the same terms. Details for each channel are in our help center.

  • Yes. Incremental doesn't sell media and operates independently from retailers, media sellers and bidding platforms. When the company measuring your ads also sells them to you, it's grading its own work. An independent, third-party read across every retailer is what lets brands compare networks fairly and move budget on evidence.

  • ROAS divides the sales a platform attributes to your ads by what you spent. iROI, or incremental return on investment, divides only the sales your ads actually caused, the ones that wouldn't have happened without the spend. ROAS includes shoppers who were going to buy anyway, so it flatters campaigns closest to checkout, like branded search. Incremental's research finds no correlation between ROAS and iROI, which is why budgets set on ROAS so often end up in the wrong places. More on iROI vs. ROAS vs. MER.

  • Most retail media platforms report on last-touch attribution, where the last ad clicked before a purchase gets full credit for the sale. That counts the ads near a sale, not the sales the ads caused. Incremental accounts for what actually moves sales, including promotions, pricing, competitive position on the page, outside media and seasonality, across every retailer you sell on. You get one comparable read on what your advertising returned.

  • Because retail sales move for reasons general tools don't see. Search rank, promotions, competitive pricing and inventory change at the SKU level every day, and they shape whether a shopper buys. Incremental builds those retail signals into every read, so it can separate what the ad did from what the shelf did. General media tools usually work at the channel level and miss that detail.

  • MMM is built for long-range planning. It typically looks at channel-level spend over months or years and gets refreshed a few times a year. Incremental reads results daily, down to the campaign and SKU, and accounts for the retail signals that move sales day to day, such as search rank, pricing, promotions and inventory. Many brands use both: MMM for the annual channel mix, Incremental for decisions inside retail and commerce media. More on MMM and incrementality: why you need both.

  • Yes. Amazon's ad console reports attributed sales, meaning sales that followed an ad within Amazon's attribution window, counted by Amazon. Incremental is an independent third party that doesn't sell media, and it measures how much of your sales Amazon Ads actually caused, side by side with your other retailers. That's how brands find branded search campaigns that look great on ROAS but mostly capture sales they'd have made anyway.

  • Often, yes. A shopper who sees your ad on Amazon may buy at Walmart or Target, and each retailer's reporting only counts sales on its own site. In our cross-retailer halo research, roughly half of offsite media's total impact went uncounted for this reason, and upper-funnel retail media ROI was understated by 3 to 5x. Incremental measures these cross-retailer effects so they show up in budget decisions instead of disappearing between reports.

  • Where retailers make store sales data available, Incremental includes in-store sales alongside online sales, so the impact of retail media isn't limited to what happens on the retailer's website. This matters most for display, video and offsite media, which often drive store purchases that standard attribution never connects back to the ad. Our cross-retailer halo research found display driving more than 40% lift in-store in some categories.

  • Yes. Incremental gives you an independent, third-party read on which retail media campaigns drive incremental sales across every channel, so you can shift spend toward the ones that do. For each platform and campaign you see incremental sales against cost, which is iROI, and that becomes the basis for reallocating budget. Brands running on iROI see 15 to 25% more incremental sales.

  • Yes. Incremental's scenario planning shows the expected sales impact of changing or shifting spend before you commit it, by retailer and by campaign. Because it starts from what your media has actually caused, plans are built on incremental returns instead of platform ROAS. It answers the question finance always asks: what does the next dollar get us?

  • Yes. Incremental's optimization recommendations push directly into Skai, Pacvue, Flywheel, and WPP Open, so teams can act on them without leaving their existing workflow. Brands running on iROI typically see 15 to 25% more incremental sales.

  • Yes. Every major agency holding company works with Incremental. Agency teams use it to give CPG clients one consistent read on retail media performance across networks, which makes it easier to recommend moving budget between retailers and campaigns with evidence clients and their finance teams will accept.

  • Daily. Incremental pulls data from media and retailer platforms through APIs and other connections as it becomes available, then publishes updated results every day. Data from every platform is mapped into one standardized view, so you're not merging spreadsheets to compare Amazon with Walmart or Instacart.

  • Through an existing network of integrations with retail media networks, ecommerce platforms and retailer reporting systems, most of which take a few clicks to connect.

  • Yes. If you need a retailer or media platform we don't already connect to, we can build a custom integration. Get in touch.

  • Customer data protection is a top priority, and the platform is built for compliance with privacy law. Details are in our privacy policy.