What does incrementality really mean, and how can brands understand whether their retail media investment is actually driving growth? In this episode of Retail Media Therapy, Viv Craske and Colin Lewis are joined by Skye Frontier, EVP at Incremental, to unpack one of the most important topics in retail media measurement: incrementality. At its core, incrementality asks a simple but critical question: Would the sale have happened if the advertising had not happened? This counterfactual is at the heart of understanding whether advertising is genuinely generating additional sales, rather than simply receiving credit for sales that would have occurred anyway. The conversation explores why traditional ROAS and last-click attribution can provide an incomplete picture of media effectiveness, and how brands can use iROAS, experimentation, test-and-control approaches, causal inference and marketing mix modelling (MMM) to better understand what is driving growth. Skye explains why strong baseline data is essential to incrementality measurement, including sales, distribution, pricing, promotions, seasonality, external factors and media exposure. The discussion also looks at the challenge of siloed retail media measurement, where individual retail media networks may only see sales within their own ecosystem, while brands need to understand how advertising influences purchasing across multiple retailers and channels. The episode also examines the relationship between incrementality, penetration, new-to-brand and new-to-category growth. Rather than treating these as interchangeable metrics, the conversation considers how advertising can contribute to incremental growth alongside other factors such as distribution and physical availability. Another key theme is practicality. Should brands measure incrementality on every campaign? The discussion explores how advertisers can prioritise measurement around the decisions that have the greatest potential impact, while recognising that an experiment showing no incremental effect can still provide valuable insight. Finally, the episode looks at branded keywords, media efficiency versus effectiveness, and why incrementality should be considered alongside pricing, promotion, assortment, competition and other commercial factors. Topics covered: Retail Media, Incrementality, iROAS, ROAS, Retail Media Networks, MMM, Marketing Mix Modelling, Media Measurement, Incremental Sales, New-to-Brand, New-to-Category, Penetration, Branded Search and Advertising Effectiveness. Grace & Co | Retail Media Experts Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
