Meta has just introduced one of the biggest advancements in measuring true ad impact. I really wish Google Ads would follow suit.
They’ve started rolling out a new feature called incremental attribution. What this means is that Meta will now optimize for the incremental impact of ads. In short, they aim to filter out conversions from people who saw the ads but would have purchased anyway.
As marketers, this is always the big question when we look at ROAS, POAS, and conversions in specific channels. What about the other channels, and would I have gotten some of these conversions even if I hadn’t spent this budget?
That’s exactly what Meta is trying to solve by leveraging their lift algorithms, using both conversion lift and geo lift.
Here’s how it works: they hold back ads from a portion of the audience that should have seen them, and then analyze the incremental lift by comparing with those who did.
Of course, this opens up broader discussions around transparency, such as which geos are included in the holdout, whether there’s enough data in smaller campaigns, and so on. But that’s not the main point.
The key takeaway is this: Meta is taking a huge step toward helping advertisers understand and act on incremental conversions. Yes, we’ve been able to run incrementality tests in different channels for a while, but let’s be honest, few marketers actually use them. Now, Meta is making it easier by automating the process.
I really welcome this move from Meta, and I hope Google Ads launches something similar. It would make it much easier for marketers to spend their budgets more effectively.
This post was originally shared by on Linkedin.