Introduction:

 

Measuring marketing effectiveness has been always a challenge for many businesses and is one of the challenges that till today is being raised, this topic has also developed throughout the years thanks to appearance of digital marketing which has lots of data that helps businesses determine how their marketing is affecting their bottom line, marketing can certainly help increase company revenue, decrease customer acquisition cost and more, while sales focuses on number of items sold marketing is more concerned with ROI or profitability that is not to say this is the only goal but showcasing that sales and marketing have different objectives and metrics.

We are no longer in the 90s and now in 2024 lots of upgrades have been done in measuring effectiveness of marketing leading to appearance of concepts such as attribution and incrementality, but what does incrementality & attribution mean and why should marketers care about them?

 

What is incrementality?

 

According to adjust” incrementality in marketing measures the actual impact that a marketing activity has on an a certain key performance indicator (KPI) for apps for example that would be things such as installs or in-app purchases (IAPs), another definition is that incrementality is a way of measurement to measure a certain event and analyze if we removed a certain element would that the outcome be the same or not, example for that if we have a certain campaign and during that time the company revenue increased by 20% measuring incrementality here will help us to determine if the actual campaign at that time led to the 20% or that 20% would have happened with the campaign or without it helping marketing team take the right actions on what to invest in and what not to invest in.

 

What is attribution?

 

Attribution in marketing has different definitions but is essentially the process of measuring and determining what marketing tactics influenced a customer to take certain action when it comes to brand such as sales, conversions or other goals so it essentially shows marketing the route that a customer took to buy products, example using Universal GA before marketers were able to determine that for example customers saw an ad from Meta, then they went on google to search and afterwards they bought a product from the website, this enables marketers to attribute or score how each channel contributed in a certain outcome.

 

How can learning about attribution & incrementality affect marketing decisions?

 

One of the most important things in digital marketing in the new era is accurate and precise measurement, in order to be able to have it is of course easier said than done because digital now multiple measurement techniques and platforms for instance we have examples like Google analytics 4 & adobe analytics to measure website performance, we also have MMPs such as adjust and appsflyer to measure app performance and those tools are a tip of the iceberg! While a few years ago people relied on FBIG and Google now we have lots of channels whether that be digital or offline or even new emerging ones that are online but with a twist for example DOOH and CTV, imagine this you work in a retail business that also has an eCom side and you have to start working on your annual marketing strategy and you have to assign your budget according to best performing channels how will you be able to do that without having sound measurement strategy? Otherwise your budgeting will not be based on data and it will not make complete sense if you rely on media data and analytics data without knowledge of the complexity of measurement (cookie less incoming too)

 

Conclusion:

 

Understanding incrementality and attribution nowadays is a necessary task and unlike 10 years ago where marketers thought of them as  very advanced concept without practical solutions now the situation has really changed and choosing the right media and marketing mix has become a hard task that needs correct data, without data you are just another person with an opinion.

Reference list:

1. How to measure incrementality in marketing | Adjust
2. Measure the value and effectiveness of ads with incrementality | Facebook IQ | Meta for Business
3. Incrementality Testing on Meta ads: an eCommerce success story | by Cassandra | Medium
4. Measure your marketing like it’s 2022 | Meta | Open Mic | The Drum
5. Get a grip on marketing incrementality – Think with Google
6. About Conversion Lift – Google Ads Help
7. What does incrementality mean in marketing? | Adjust
8. About Incrementality When Running Tests on Meta Technologies | Meta Business Help Center (facebook.com)
9. Use incrementality testing for effective marketing measurement (thinkwithgoogle.com)
10. How To Measure The Success Of Your Marketing Campaigns (forbes.com)
11. Four Things Marketers Should Prepare For In 2023 (forbes.com)
12. The Top 5 Marketing Challenges Expected Globally in 2024, And How to Overcome Them [Data + Expert Tips] (hubspot.com)
13. Marketing attribution — models and best practices (adobe.com)