An ecommerce company hires your PPC agency to explore paid search. A solid plan follows, and after approval, the campaigns go live. Soon, you’re seeing stellar results: high conversion volumes and a healthy ROAS.
On the surface, the strategy is a resounding success.
But look closer.
Some of these conversions might have occurred anyway via direct or organic search traffic — meaning the campaigns may not be driving real growth. Too often, this goes unmeasured.
To truly understand performance, you need to look at incremental lift and marginal ROAS.
The truth about ROAS
Perhaps you’ve heard about eBay’s paid search experiment? They were spending heavily on brand PPC ads. Then they ran a controlled test, turning those ads off for a portion of users to measure impact.
Organic traffic picked up most of those conversions, with minimal impact on revenue. But guess what? Despite the clear results, eBay turned the branded ads back on. Fear, or smart? You tell me.
With search becoming increasingly automated, and the customer journey spreading across more surfaces than ever, attributing conversions to the right channels is harder than ever. Advertising platforms are quick to claim credit for these conversions, but be skeptical.
What most platforms report is attributed return, not causal lift. In other words, ROAS tells you how much revenue the platform says it influenced; it doesn’t tell you how much of that revenue would have happened without the ads.
When it comes to black-box automation like Performance Max and Advantage+, platforms have become exceptionally good at one thing: finding the path of least resistance to a conversion. They aren’t necessarily finding new customers. They’re often just becoming the most expensive touchpoint in a journey that was already destined to convert.
Without measuring incrementality, automation simply amplifies non-incremental signals, such as:
- Brand search campaigns capturing existing demand.
- Retargeting campaigns hitting users who were seconds away from purchasing.
- Reporting that makes “safe” channels appear more valuable than they truly are.
Dig deeper: Paid media efficiency: How to cut waste and improve ROAS
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Incrementality is causal lift — what changed because the campaign existed, typically measured by comparing exposed groups with holdout or control groups. So what did this campaign actually drive that wouldn’t have happened otherwise?
Even though you may not want to admit it, this is a much more useful lens for budget allocation than platform attribution alone.
A channel can have a fantastic in-platform ROAS and still generate a weak incremental impact. Why?…
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