Incrementality
Also: incremental
Incrementality is the part of a result – such as sales or new customers – that is actually caused by an advertising measure and would not have happened without it. It is measured against a control group that has not seen the advertising.
The True Effect view
Almost all KPI systems include the baseline: the sales that would have happened without any media investment. But someone who would have bought anyway is not an advertising success. We separate this background noise from the real additional sales – with uplift studies such as geo uplift tests with test and control regions.
Only the incremental value shows whether an investment has paid off. That’s why it is the benchmark for every campaign we run.
Example
A campaign runs in ten test regions, while ten comparable control regions see no advertising. If sales rise by 12 % in the test regions and by 4 % in the control regions, the incremental effect is around 8 percentage points – not 12 %.