Your Retail Media ROAS Is Lying to You
Attributed sales are not incremental sales. Attributed means the ad was nearby when it happened. Incremental means the ad is the reason it happened. One is worth paying for. The other is a tax you volunteer for.
Your retail media ROAS is lying to you, and most operators know it. Retail media is a $69B US business this year, yet only 15% of brands are confident they can measure it and 75% say proving incrementality is their biggest challenge (Skai). They call it ROAS theater: the ad reports $4 back for every $1, but a big share of those sales were happening anyway.
Attributed is not incremental. The fix is operator-simple: turn your best campaign off in one region for two weeks, separate brand-name defense from real acquisition, and report incremental sales to your board, not attributed ones. Stop paying for applause. Start paying for lift.
I help operators find the money leaking out of their ad budget. satya.me/advisory
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