The world of retail media is a bit of a circus right now. You've got Amazon Advertising, Walmart Connect, Instacart Ads, Kroger Precision Marketing... the list grows seemingly every quarter. Each one is its own little kingdom with its own rules, its own reporting, and its own special way of telling you how wonderfully your ad dollars are being spent. It's the wild west, and we, the advertisers and brands, are just trying to find our way without getting lost.
For years, I've had conversations with clients that all sound frustratingly similar. They're pouring serious budget into these retail media networks (RMNs), but when it comes time to figure out what’s actually working, they're staring at a mess of disparate dashboards. It’s like trying to assemble a puzzle where every piece is from a different box. How do you truly compare performance? How do you know if a sale on one platform was truly caused by your ad, or if it was just a happy accident?
That's the million-dollar question, isn't it? And it's why my ears perk up whenever I hear about a platform that claims to bring some sanity to the chaos. Enter Incremental, a platform that positions itself not as another player on the field, but as the neutral, third-party umpire. An interesting proposition, to say the least.
What Exactly is Incremental? (And Why Should You Care?)
At its core, Incremental is a retail media measurement and analytics platform. But that's a bit of a dry description. What it really does is act as a universal translator for your e-commerce ad spend. It plugs into your entire e-commerce stack—all those different RMNs you're advertising on—and pulls the data into one place. From there, it aims to give you a single source of truth about your performance.
The key thing to grasp, and it's right there in their messaging, is that they are neutral. Their whole pitch is, “Your business is our priority. Not buying or selling media.” They don't have a horse in the race. They’re not trying to sell you more ads on a specific network; their only job is to provide clean, unbiased data on what’s driving real growth. In an industry where everyone is grading their own homework, that’s a pretty refreshing take.
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Moving Beyond the Vanity Metric of ROAS
For as long as I've been in this game, Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) has been the go-to metric. It’s simple, it's clean, and it makes for nice charts in a quarterly report. But experienced marketers know its dirty little secret: ROAS can lie. Or at least, it doesn't tell the whole story.
A high ROAS might mean your ads are reaching people who were already going to buy your product anyway. They saw your ad for laundry detergent right before adding the same detergent to their cart that they've been buying for ten years. Did the ad cause that sale? Or was it just in the right place at the right time? That’s where the concept of incrementality comes in, and it's the heart of what this platform is all about.
Incremental lift measures the sales that would not have happened without the ad campaign. It’s the true measure of an ad’s impact. By focusing on this, Incremental promises to help you understand whether your budget is creating new customers or just subsidizing sales you would have gotten for free. This is a massive shift in thinking from just chasing a high ROAS figure.
The Core Features That Power Your Decisions
So, how does it actually deliver on this promise? It comes down to a few key capabilities that I saw highlighted.
Truly Consistent Measurement
This is probably the biggest pain point for brands. Trying to compare a campaign on Amazon to one on Instacart is an apples-to-oranges nightmare. They have different attribution windows, different definitions of a “conversion,” and different reporting styles. Incremental solves this by ingesting all that raw data and normalizing it under one consistent measurement framework. It's like having a Rosetta Stone for your retail media metrics, allowing you to finally make meaningful comparisons.
Actionable Campaign Optimization
Data is useless if you can't do anything with it. Another promise of the platform is that it doesn't just show you dashboards; it provides actionable recommendations. It might suggest shifting budget from a low-performing campaign on one network to a high-potential one on another to maximize your incremental return. It turns passive data analysis into active strategy, which is where the real value lies.
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Scenario Planning for the Future
This feature caught my eye. The platform allows you to run “what-if” scenarios. What if we increased our budget by 15% next quarter? Where should we allocate it for the best incremental lift? What if we pulled back on a specific product line? Being able to forecast the potential outcomes of your strategic decisions before you commit the budget is a powerful advantage. It moves you from being reactive to being predictive.
The Good, The Bad, and The Complicated
No tool is perfect, and from my analysis, Incremental is no exception. It’s a specialized tool with a specific purpose, and that comes with its own set of trade-offs.
The biggest positive, by far, is the neutrality. I can't overstate how important this is. Having an unbiased third party validate your spend across networks builds trust and confidence in your strategy. The focus on true incrementality over simple ROAS is also a huge win for any brand serious about sustainable growth.
On the other hand, a platform this powerful requires integration. It needs to connect to your various data sources to work its magic. That's not a simple click-to-install process; it will require some technical lift from your team. There's also likely a learning curve. This isn’t a dashboard you glance at once a week; to get your money's worth, you'll need to really dig in and learn how to interpret the data and use the tools. But honestly, thats true for any tool that delivers real value.
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Let’s Talk About the Elephant in the Room: The Pricing
So, what does all this cost? Well, that's the big question. If you go looking for a pricing page on Incremental's website, you'll be met with a friendly 'Page Not Found' error. This isn't a mistake; it's a strategy.
The absence of public pricing tells me this is a serious enterprise-level SaaS platform. The cost is almost certainly customized based on your ad spend, the number of networks you're on, and the complexity of your business. You won't find a $99/month plan here. Their call to action is clear: “Book a Demo.” This is a classic sales model for high-value software. They want to talk to you, understand your pain points, and then build a custom quote that reflects the value they can provide. For the right kind of company, this is actually a good thing, as it means you're getting a solution tailored to your needs, not a one-size-fits-all product.
Who is Incremental Actually For?
Based on all this, it's pretty clear who the ideal customer is. If you're a small brand spending a few hundred dollars a month on a single retail media network, this is probably overkill for you right now. But if you're an established CPG brand, a multi-channel retailer, or an agency managing six or seven-figure ad budgets across Amazon, Walmart, Target, and others, you are exactly who this was built for. You are the one feeling the acute pain of siloed data and questionable attribution. You are the one who stands to gain the most from a unified, unbiased view of your performance.
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Final Thoughts
The retail media space is only going to get more crowded and more complex. Brands that succeed won't be the ones that just spend the most; they'll be the ones that spend the smartest. Tools like Incremental represent a maturation of the market—a move away from vanity metrics and toward a more sophisticated understanding of what truly drives business growth.
While it requires an investment of time and resources to get set up, the promise of a neutral, unified measurement platform focused on real, incremental growth is compelling. If you're managing a significant retail media budget and feel like you're flying blind, getting a demo might just be the thing that finally turns the lights on.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
- What is retail media incrementality?
- Incrementality measures the sales and conversions that happened specifically because of your advertising efforts, filtering out sales that would have occurred anyway. It's a way to measure the true impact of your ad spend.
- Is Incremental a demand-side platform (DSP)?
- No. Incremental is not a DSP and doesn't buy or sell media. It is a neutral measurement and analytics platform that integrates with the RMNs and DSPs you already use to measure their effectiveness.
- What retail media networks can Incremental measure?
- The platform is designed to be a unified solution, so it likely integrates with all major retail media networks like Amazon Ads, Walmart Connect, Instacart Ads, and more. For a specific list, it's best to contact their team directly during a demo.
- Why isn’t Incremental’s pricing public?
- This is typical for enterprise-level software. Pricing is likely customized based on factors like your ad spend volume, the number of retail networks you operate on, and the specific features you need. This requires a consultation to determine a fair price.
- How difficult is it to integrate Incremental?
- Integrating a platform like this involves connecting it to your various e-commerce and advertising data sources. It will require technical resources and collaboration with their team, but this deep integration is what enables its powerful, unified analytics.
