Nederlands 
English Incrementality in marketing
Incrementality is the revenue a channel truly adds, on top of what would have happened anyway. It is the only measure that tells you whether a media euro pays for itself.
Incrementality is the additional revenue or conversion that is directly the result of a marketing effort and would not have arisen without that effort.
Claimed revenue versus incremental revenue
A large proportion of the conversions that channels report would have occurred without that channel anyway. Someone who already knows your brand searches for your name, clicks your brand ad and buys. The channel claims the sale, but added little.
Incrementality measures only the difference a channel actually makes. The question is not whether a conversion passed through a channel, but whether that conversion would have happened without it.
That difference is significant. Channels running on brand traffic and retargeting often show high claimed figures and low incrementality. Channels that generate new demand, such as TV, tend to score the opposite way.
How you measure incrementality
There are three methods, each with its own application.
Geo experiments
You activate a channel in some regions but not others, and compare revenue. Clean, but limited in scalability.
Marketing Mix Modeling
The model estimates the incremental contribution per channel from historical variation in spend and revenue.
Conversion lift tests
A test group sees ads, a control group does not. The difference is the incremental lift.
Why incrementality allocates budget better
If you optimise on claimed conversions, you reward the channels that register best, not the channels that add the most. You shift budget toward the bottom of the funnel and keep targeting the same people.
If you optimise on incrementality, you allocate budget according to actual contribution. That is the foundation of budget optimisation and of an honest marketing ROI.
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between incrementality and attribution?
Attribution distributes registered conversions across touchpoints. Incrementality measures whether a conversion would have occurred without the channel. A conversion can be attributed to a channel and still not be incremental.
Why is incrementality lower than claimed revenue?
Because a portion of claimed conversions would have happened anyway. Channels focused on brand traffic and retargeting in particular claim revenue that would have arisen without their involvement.
Can I measure incrementality without experiments?
Yes. Marketing Mix Modeling estimates the incremental contribution from historical data. Geo experiments and lift tests provide additional evidence, but they are not the only route.
Which channels typically have the highest incrementality?
It varies by organisation. In practice, channels that generate new demand, such as TV and prospecting, often score higher on incrementality than channels that harvest existing demand.
Optimise on incrementality, not on claims.
Book a demo and see how Datafy calculates the incremental contribution of each channel.