As a marketer, it's your job to keep track of where and how much money you spend on marketing and understand how much impact it brings to the business. This is where the concept of incrementality comes into play.
Incrementality shows how a specific marketing campaign or activity affects an app’s KPIs such as installs or in-app purchases.
In this blog, we will explore what incrementality is, how it can be measured, and why it is crucial for marketers aiming to optimize their campaigns and maximize return on investment (ROI).
Understanding Incrementality
As previously mentioned, incrementality measures the impact of a marketing activity on sales or growth beyond what would happen naturally using KPIs such as installs or in-app purchases.
It answers the question: Would I have achieved these results without this campaign? Or What benefit did this campaign had?

Incrementality can easily help with attribution challenges that may have complicated the measurement of campaign performance. Though one can use traditional A/B testing too but it may not always be practical and can also be complex, costly or both.
Incrementality is more than just counting how many times an app is downloaded. It shows how marketing campaigns work.
For example, if an app marketer starts a new ad campaign, incrementality shows how many of the new installs are due to the campaign itself, rather than other factors like organic growth or seasonal trends.
Importance of Incrementality in marketing
Optimizing Marketing Spend
One of the primary benefits of measuring incrementality is the ability to optimize marketing budgets. By identifying which campaigns drive real value, app marketers can allocate resources more effectively. Instead of relying on surface-level metrics such as impressions or clicks, incrementality provides insights into the actual outcomes of marketing efforts. This allows marketers to focus on high-performing channels and tactics, ensuring that every dollar spent contributes to user acquisition and retention.
Avoiding Overlap and Waste
In the app marketing landscape, campaigns often overlap, leading to potential waste of resources. Incrementality testing helps marketers avoid attributing the same results to multiple campaigns. For example, if an app runs simultaneous campaigns on social media and search engines, incrementality can clarify which channel is truly driving installs. This clarity is essential for refining marketing strategies and ensuring that budgets are spent wisely.
Improved Decision-Making
Incrementality provides actionable insights that empower app marketers to make data-driven decisions. By understanding what works and what doesn’t, marketers can refine their strategies, optimize their messaging, and enhance user targeting. This level of insight is invaluable in a competitive marketplace, where the ability to pivot quickly can make all the difference.
Proving ROI
Demonstrating the return on investment (ROI) of marketing efforts is a critical aspect of any app marketing strategy. Incrementality offers concrete evidence of how campaigns contribute to app growth, making it easier to justify marketing budgets to stakeholders. By showcasing the incremental lift generated by specific campaigns, app marketers can build a compelling case for continued investment in successful strategies.
Why incrementality matters in marketing
Help optimize marketing spend
One of the primary benefits of measuring incrementality is the ability to optimize marketing budgets. By identifying which campaigns drive real value, app marketers can allocate resources more effectively.
Instead of relying on surface-level metrics such as impressions or clicks, incrementality provides insights into the actual outcomes of marketing efforts. This allows marketers to focus on high-performing channels and campaigns, ensuring that every dollar spent contributes to user acquisition and retention.
Preventing overlap and waste
It’s very common is app marketing to have campaigns that have a large overlap, which is a potential waste of resources and budget. Incrementality testing helps marketers avoid attributing the same results to multiple campaigns.
Imagine running two app marketing campaigns simultaneously: Campaign A targets current users to increase engagement, while Campaign B aims to attract new users. Incrementality testing reveals that most of the increased activity is driven by Campaign A. This insight prevents marketers from mistakenly attributing equal success to both campaigns, thereby reducing overlap and optimizing resource allocation.
Improved decision-making
App marketers can make data-driven decisions with the help of incrementality.
By understanding what works and what doesn’t, one can refine their strategies, optimize their messaging, and user targeting. In a market where every other company is aggressively trying to attract and retain users, this insight is extremely important.
Showcase ROI
Incrementality provides actual proof of how campaigns drive app growth, simplifying the task of justifying marketing budgets to all stakeholders. By highlighting the incremental lift produced by specific campaigns, app marketers can effectively advocate for ongoing investment in successful strategies.
How to measure incrementality
Measuring incrementality typically involves conducting incrementality tests, which compare the outcomes of two groups:
- Treatment Group: This group is introduced to the marketing campaign.
- Control Group: This group is not introduced to the campaign.
By analyzing the differences in outcomes between these groups, marketers can isolate the incremental impact of their efforts. For instance, if the treatment group experiences a 25% increase in app installs compared to the control group, that 25% represents the incremental lift attributable to the campaign.
There are several methodologies for measuring incrementality in app marketing, including:
- A/B Testing: This method involves randomly assigning users to either the treatment or control group to assess the impact of a specific campaign on app installs or user engagement.
- Geo-Testing: In this approach, campaigns are run in specific geographic areas while leaving others untouched, allowing for a comparison of results.
- Time-Based Analysis: This method examines app install data before, during, and after a campaign to identify any significant changes that can be attributed to the marketing effort.
Each of these methods has its strengths and can be chosen based on the specific goals of the campaign and the available data.
Use of incrementality
Incrementality is useful for app marketing in many ways. Here are some ways that marketers can use incrementality:
- In-app promotions: For apps that rely on in-app purchases or subscriptions, incrementality can help understand whether promotional campaigns drive additional revenue or simply shift existing demand. Understanding this can help app marketers and developers design more effective promotional flow.
- Retention strategies: Incrementality can also be applied to retention efforts. By measuring the impact of re-engagement campaigns on user retention rates, marketers can identify which strategies are most effective in keeping users engaged over time.
- Feature launches: When launching new features, incrementality can provide insights into how marketing efforts contribute to user adoption. By measuring the incremental impact of launch campaigns, app marketers can refine their approach for future feature introductions.
Summing it up
As marketing keeps changing, incrementality will become even more important. Marketers who will adopt incrementality will indeed have better understanding of their marketing campaigns.
Whether you're an experienced marketer or just starting, knowing and using incrementality is essential for long-term success in today’s fast-changing market.