Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) is a favorite metric among marketers, but it has a fundamental flaw—it assumes that attributed revenue is fully driven by the ad spend. In reality, ROAS often overstates effectiveness by ignoring factors like organic cannibalization and cross-channel influence.

A campaign may show strong ROAS, but was it truly incremental? If those conversions would have happened anyway, or if the campaign simply diverted revenue from another channel, then the investment wasn’t actually beneficial.

The Problem with Traditional Attribution

Most attribution models, especially last-touch, only credit the final click or impression. This fails to account for:

• Organic conversions that would have happened without the ad.
• Overlap with other paid channels that contribute to the same sale.
• The halo effect—where ads in one channel boost performance in another.

Relying on ROAS alone can lead to misallocated budgets and wasted ad spend.

Measuring What Truly Matters: Incremental ROI

INCRMNTAL measures incremental ROI, not just ROAS. Instead of focusing on attributed revenue, our platform evaluates the actual lift caused by ad spend—identifying whether a campaign creates new revenue or just shifts it around.

Our approach continuously analyzes data across channels, using prediction analytics and synthetic cohorts to isolate the real impact of paid media. This difference-in-difference methodology allows marketers to see beyond surface-level attribution and make smarter, data-driven investment decisions.

The bottom line? High ROAS doesn’t always mean high returns. Incrementality does.