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<\/div>\nFor years, \u201cperformance\u201d measurement<\/a> was basically credit assignment. Last-click doesn\u2019t tell you the full story of what caused a conversion; it tells you where the conversion showed up. That was tolerable when channels were siloed. It\u2019s not tolerable in 2026, when CTV is increasingly bought with growth expectations and stitched into cross-device funnels.<\/span><\/p>\n The market is also hearing a more candid admission from the biggest platforms: last-click can materially overstate impact – by more than 30% in some analyses<\/a> – because it rewards whoever happens to be nearest to the moment of conversion. <\/span><\/p>\n In CTV, where exposure is often view-through, and actions happen on other screens, that distortion can turn \u201cgood ROAS<\/a>\u201d into a mirage. That\u2019s why incrementality is becoming a necessary baseline. In practice, it means fewer arguments about attribution models and more routine experimentation baked into media plans.<\/span><\/p>\n As CTV becomes more competitive<\/a> – with more buyers, higher CPMs, and more scrutiny – standards have risen. Performance teams can usually make CTV work in tests. The hard part is defending scale. Finance and procurement want to know whether the spend created new outcomes or simply intercepted demand that would have converted anyway.<\/span><\/p>\n As that posture spreads, \u201cshow me attribution\u201d won\u2019t be enough; \u201cshow me lift\u201d becomes the cost of entry. Expect this to show up first in managed-service deals, then as the norm in larger self-serve commitments.<\/span><\/p>\n This won\u2019t kill click-through measurement. Most growth advertisers will run incrementality in parallel with attribution, using attribution for fast optimization and incrementality as the validation for scaling budgets. <\/span><\/p>\n To be clear, attribution is still useful, for speed and capturing a moment in time in particular: identifying tracking discrepancies, optimizing creative, reacting quickly when something changes. But it\u2019s a weaker referee in a world of overlapping exposure. When CTV, mobile retargeting, paid search, and email touch the same user, last-touch logic becomes a game of who was the last to touch the ball. We should be looking at hockey-style assists (multiple touches prior to the goal), rather than how a tennis winner is \u201cscored.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n Incrementality answers a different question: how many outcomes would not have happened without the ad exposure? Whether the design is geo lift, audience holdout, ghost ads, or another approach, the principle is consistent: compare a credible \u201cno-ad\u201d baseline to reality.<\/span><\/p>\n That baseline matters more in CTV because CTV is increasingly used as the top of a multi-step funnel. Teams are starting to treat CTV exposure as a trigger for downstream retargeting sequences across screens. The more coordinated that funnel becomes, the less meaningful the last-click becomes. Since TVs are typically not the device of conversion, marketers need to be creative in how they ensure and confirm conversions. According to eMarketer<\/a>, CTV allows for not just attribution, but validation of a conversion using software and household devices.<\/span><\/p>\n If incrementality is the cleaner truth, why are some marketers dragging their feet on doing it? Because it\u2019s historically<\/em> been expensive, slow, and operationally painful. Tests require clean splits, stable windows, enough volume for significance, and discipline across teams. Many brands can\u2019t run them continuously, and many sellers haven\u2019t integrated testing into buying workflows.<\/span><\/p>\n That friction is exactly why the coming shift will be fast. As sellers mandate incrementality and sophisticated buyers demand it to unlock spend, the advantage will belong to whoever lowers the cost of truth: simpler setup, clearer methodologies, fewer integrations, faster time-to-readout.<\/span><\/p>\n CTV advertisers need to treat incrementality like viewability: a baseline requirement. Build a test calendar aligned to major spend moments. Decide when attribution is sufficient for optimization and when incrementality is required to scale. And be honest about what incrementality can\u2019t do: it won\u2019t fix bad creative or weak supply, but it will stop you from mistaking correlation for causation.<\/span><\/p>\n If CTV is going to keep swallowing \u201cperformance\u201d budgets, it can\u2019t keep living on flattering math. The next era is colder: lift, or it didn\u2019t happen. Brands that can\u2019t produce a believable baseline will keep paying for conversions they were already going to get – and the ones that can will finally know which dollars are working.<\/span><\/p>\n [Editor’s note: This is a contributed article from AppsFlyer<\/a>.\u00a0Streaming Media accepts vendor bylines based solely on their value to our readers.]<\/span><\/span><\/em><\/p>\nStandards are forming<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
Why parallel measurement works<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
What should leaders do now?<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n
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