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Paid Media

Incrementality.

Definition

What it means.

Incrementality is the share of measured conversions that would not have happened without the ad. Attribution assigns credit; incrementality asks whether the ad caused anything. It is measured with holdouts or geo experiments, and it is the defense against paying to reach people who were converting anyway.

Worked example

In practice.

A retargeting campaign reports stellar ROAS. A geo holdout withholds it from matched regions and finds little measured difference. The team checks test power, uncertainty, and comparability before interpreting that result. If the experiment rules out a commercially meaningful lift, it can inform a new allocation test; a small observed difference alone does not prove there was no effect.

Where this work happens: Paid Advertising

Put it in context.

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