Let’s Talk About What Really Matters in Retail Media
Remember when everyone was scrambling to get into retail media? Those days of just showing up and claiming territory are over. Now it’s all about proving your ads actually work.
Here’s the thing about retail media that makes it special – both retailers and advertisers want the same thing: more sales. But let’s be honest with ourselves… how often do we really know if our ads are driving those sales, or if shoppers would have bought anyway?
The numbers speak for themselves. A recent survey found that 71% of advertisers now care most about incrementality when evaluating their retail media investments. In plain English? They want proof their ad dollars are creating sales that wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Yet despite knowing better, most of us are still making decisions based on outdated metrics. So let’s break down what’s happening and how we can do better.
What Is Incrementality (and Why Should You Care)?
Think of incrementality as the truth-teller of advertising. It answers one simple question we should all be asking: “Would this person have bought my product even if they never saw my ad?”
Without this reality check, we’re just patting ourselves on the back for sales that might have happened anyway. And as marketing budgets get tighter (as Gartner’s 2025 CMO survey shows), nobody can afford to waste money on ads that look good on paper but don’t actually grow the business.
You might have a campaign with impressive return figures, but if those customers were already heading to checkout, what did you really accomplish besides burning budget?
The Problem with How We’ve Been Measuring Success
We all agree incrementality matters, but measuring it properly has been a real headache. Many marketing teams simply don’t have the people or expertise to run complex testing experiments in-house. Almost half of marketers don’t fully trust the incrementality results they get.
From the retailer side, traditional testing approaches come with some serious drawbacks:
- They’re labor-intensive – requiring special setup, manual campaign management, and dedicated teams
- They force you to sacrifice revenue by completely hiding ads from large groups of potential customers
- They clash with today’s sophisticated targeting algorithms – you can’t optimize properly when you’re deliberately hiding ads from segments of your audience
A Smarter Approach: How We’ve Built Incrementality into the System
At DigitalWorld 25, we’ve taken a different route by building incrementality measurement directly into how our ads work. Our approach uses something called “ghost bidding” that lets us measure true impact during live campaigns without sacrificing targeting or disrupting your broader strategy.
So How Does This “Ghost Bidding” Actually Work?
Instead of the old-school approach of completely blocking ads for some users, we use a more sophisticated method:
- For most users, everything works normally – your ads compete in auctions and appear when they win
- For a randomly selected test group, we identify when your ad would have won, but intentionally hold it back
- Everything else stays the same – other advertisers’ ads still appear normally
This gives us two perfectly matched groups to compare: people who saw your ads and people who would have seen them under identical circumstances but didn’t. The difference in their behavior shows us exactly what impact your ads are having.
Getting Real Results That Make Sense
To make sure our measurements are accurate, we’re careful about which users we include:
- We only count people who actually saw your ads (not everyone who was eligible)
- For the control group, we only include people who would have seen your ads based on the same rules
- We count all purchases during the test period – not just the ones directly attributed to clicks
This approach gives you an honest, apples-to-apples comparison that shows the true value of your advertising.
What We’re Seeing: The Real Impact of Retail Media
When we tested this approach with advertisers across different retail media platforms, the results were eye-opening:
- Some campaigns delivered an incredible 1,609% incremental return on ad spend, while others came in at 253%
- Between 4% and 29% of conversions among ad-exposed users were truly incremental – meaning up to 29 out of every 100 purchases wouldn’t have happened without the ads
This wide range shows that some campaigns are creating tremendous value, while others have room to improve. But even campaigns with lower incrementality are still delivering meaningful results – they’re just not all created equal.
How to Get Incrementality Right
Based on what we’ve learned running these tests, here are some practical tips:
- Don’t rush to conclusions – make sure you have enough data over a sufficient time period to draw meaningful insights
- Define your test groups carefully – only include users who were actually eligible to see your ads
- Count all purchases – not just the ones directly attributed to ad clicks
- Watch out for external factors – like promotions or seasonal events that might skew your results
- Test regularly – customer behavior changes constantly, so what worked last quarter might not work the same way today
Where Do We Go From Here?
As more platforms build testing directly into their systems, measuring true impact will become easier and more affordable for businesses of all sizes.
Just as important will be measurement approaches that don’t rely on cookies or personal information. Our AI-native approach uses real-time behavior and context rather than persistent tracking, making it both privacy-friendly and more reliable for measuring what really matters.
Ready to Focus on What Actually Works?
If you’re tired of wondering whether your retail media investments are truly driving growth or just taking credit for sales you would have gotten anyway, we can help. Our approach gives you clear, trustworthy insights about what’s really working.
Ready to shift the conversation from how much you’re spending to how much value you’re creating? Let’s talk about how DigitalWorld 25 can transform your retail media strategy.