Your inventory is running smoothly, you’re flying high. You’ve mastered online marketing and you’re seeing sales on your own domain as well as getting a nice payout from Amazon every month. But Amazon takes a high fee, so you decide: “I’m going to pause my Amazon sales and I’ll reallocate capital to marketing my own domain”.

But after you pause your product on Amazon – nothing happens. Sales remain flat. You decide to pause your own marketing campaigns – and sales across your own domain, sales coming from Target.com and Walmart.com too, remain flat. 

What is going on?!

More and more companies realize why they need to measure incrementality continuously. But running a D2C or eCommerce business today is a bit like playing darts while Amazon, Target, and Walmart spin you around and blindfold you. Sounds dramatic? It's not. It's reality.

The Efficiency Dilemma: Why ROAS Worship Is a Trap

Everyone's chasing "efficiency" - a code word for squeezing every last drop of return out of marketing budgets. Fair enough. But most brands are looking in the wrong mirror. Instead of asking, "What channel shows the best ROAS?", the question needs to be, "Which efforts actually caused incremental sales?"

Because if you're measuring success by what’s easy to track - last-click attribution, platform-reported ROAS, or even fuzzy pixel-based models - congratulations, you’re optimizing for the wrong outcomes.

Incrementality is the one metric that cuts through the noise. It doesn't care if the customer clicked 5 ads, searched your brand on Google, and still would've bought anyway. It measures true lift. It answers the brutal question: "Would I have gotten this sale without this marketing activity?" 

(Spoiler: a lot of times, the answer is "yes," and you're burning cash.)

The Data Problem No One Wants to Talk About

Now let's talk about the real enemy: lack of access to your own damn data.

If you're selling via Amazon, Walmart, or Target, you’re already handcuffed. You can't just pop into your dashboard and download clean "sales by zip code" reports to run geographic lift tests.

• Amazon? Forget about it. Sellers get vague reporting, and zero surgical precision over geography.
• Walmart and Target? Same deal. Retail media platforms are built for their margins, not your insights.

(PS: Their and Yours are NOT the same ;-)

Without granular data like zip code-level sales, how exactly are you supposed to:
• Run holdout tests?
• Set up geo split experiments?
• Validate whether a new campaign actually moved the needle?

You can't. You're stuck "trusting" platform attribution - and let’s be real, that's like letting the fox audit the henhouse.

And here's the kicker: there are players in the market hyping "seamless" integrations and "easy" incrementality testing as if it's all push-button magic. They're selling dreams without mentioning the cold reality: if you're dependent on sales data from Amazon, Walmart, or Target, you will not get the granularity you need. Period. No integration or platform wizardry can conjure data that the giants refuse to share.

If a solution sounds too clean and easy, it's because they're glossing over the fact that the data you need simply isn't available to you. No amount of slick onboarding screens will fix that.

The Way Out: Incrementality Measurement Without Experiments

The path forward is to embrace measurement frameworks that don't rely on controlled lab conditions or fantasy-level data access. Here’s what smarter brands are doing:

1. Always-on Measurement: No more "one test a year" mentality. Brands need a culture of constant causal learning.
2. Synthetic Control Models: AI/ML-based solutions that infer lift even when data isn't perfect.
3. Unified Measurement: Measuring all spend across all sales - and not fooling yourself into believing in a reality fitting your agenda.

Platforms like INCRMNTAL are built for exactly this messy, real-world scenario. (Yeah, shameless plug, but seriously - this is why we exist.)

If you're sitting around waiting for Amazon to hand you better data, you're going to grow old and gray first. Plan for a future where you can’t rely on getting "perfect" information - but you can still make better, bolder decisions.

INCRMNTAL has been helping marketers at D2C and eCommerce companies measure incrementality without needing planned experiments or gaining access to inaccessible data sets locked behind the doors of retailers and marketplace platforms. 

Just keep this in mind:

• Chasing efficiency without measuring incrementality is like tuning up a car that's missing an engine.
• If you're selling via big marketplaces, you’re getting stiffed on the data you need.
• True success comes from measuring real lift - even in imperfect conditions.
• Build for the messy reality, not the fantasy.

Control what you can. Question what you’re told. Measure what matters.