Anyone who has run incrementality tests knows that brand search and retargeting attributed conversions are often overstated. These channels almost always show low incrementality, and frequently show close to zero incremental performance.
But that doesn’t mean that they never drive value.
There are external factors that can significantly improve the incremental performance of these channels. Understanding these factors helps us decide when to maintain or increase investments in channels that show low incrementality “on average.”
At Charlie Oscar, we run always-on MMM alongside platform-based attribution for every campaign, so we can monitor changes in incremental performance and understand how these external factors affect channel performance. Over time, we’ve identified some key learnings that should influence budget allocation across these low-incrementality channels.
1. Low Awareness Markets
Paid Brand Search campaigns typically show weak incrementality in core markets where brand awareness is high and there is already a large customer base.
What we learned: Incremental performance improves significantly in new markets and with new audiences, frequently more than doubling incremental performance ratios. If you’re launching in a new market, brand search can actually become a major driver of incremental value.
2. Your Own Promotions
Both Brand Search and Retargeting campaigns show higher relative incremental performance when running promotions.
Why it works: The combination of controlled messaging and increased distribution of these offers helps transactional channels deliver more incremental value. Promotions aren’t just for volume, they can actually shift the baseline incrementality of your campaigns.
3. Competitors’ Promotions
Even if your brand isn’t running a promotion, Paid Brand Search campaigns tend to become more incremental when competitors are on promotion.
How it happens: Increased conversions for competitors are partially counteracted by higher Paid Brand coverage, which allows your brand to capture incremental conversions you might otherwise have missed.
4. Everyone is on Promotion
During major promotional periods, think Black Friday, incrementality for transactional channels increases significantly.
Impact: BAU metrics often understate potential here. Incremental performance usually more than doubles, and transactional channels start to punch above their weight.
We can’t control all of these factors. But we can aim to understand their impact.
Once we know the impact, we can adjust for the factors we can’t control while optimising the factors we can.
