Social Rocket
At Target Roundel, only eight percent of advertisers use incrementality as their most important metric for their campaigns. That is what Shawn McGahee, Senior Director Performance & Insights at Roundel, said at an event for advertisers in New York. ADWEEK published the statement on 16 October 2026. The eight percent refers to the share of Roundel advertisers for whom incrementality is the primary measure of success. It is not an extrapolation for all retail media providers.
Why attribution is not enough
When a customer buys after seeing an ad, an ad system can credit the campaign with the sale. Whether the purchase would also have happened without the ad remains open. Incrementality is designed to measure exactly this difference. Randomly selected test and control groups can be compared for this purpose.
Roundel describes incrementality as the measurement of additional business results and notes that corresponding tests are only available for suitable campaigns. Goal and investment level influence which method makes sense. The 8 percent figure therefore does not prove that all other customers use no impact measurement at all.
European standards are becoming more concrete
IAB Europe published updated Commerce Media Measurement Standards V2.1 in January 2026. They contain a formal definition of incrementality, standardised gross and net revenue terms and a recommended 30-day evaluation period. Other time windows remain possible but must then be stated transparently.
This matters for German brands because retail media is increasingly extending into the full funnel. Retailers sell not only sponsored product placements but also video, display and offsite reach. This increases the risk that different systems each claim the same purchase as their own success.
What German media buyers should check
Before larger spending, it should be clear what is supposed to grow: buyers, orders, revenue or contribution margin. How is the comparison group formed? How are discounts, returns and seasonal effects taken into account? Are the sample and measurement period large enough to detect reliable differences?
The independent review of incrementality measurement at DoorDash shows that trust in the method is becoming a competitive factor. At the same time, retail media competes for more branding budget, where a high platform-reported ROAS tells only a limited story about additional brand value.
Conclusion: The Roundel statement shows a gap between the ambition to measure additional revenue and the KPIs that many advertisers actually prioritise. Attribution remains useful – but its results should not be presented as a causal advertising effect.