Only 8% of Roundel's advertisers use incrementality measurement as their primary performance metric, according to Shawn McGahee, senior director of performance and insights for Target's advertising business. McGahee disclosed the figure on Tuesday at an advertiser event in New York. He said he remains confident in the retailer's approach to the metric, but acknowledged that most brands are not ready to fully rely on it.

The number matters because Target, like other retailers, has spent the past couple of years pushing advertisers to adopt incrementality for their retail campaigns. Incrementality is a metric that aims to determine the sales revenue generated by a campaign versus sales that would have happened without showing the ad, often comparing results across test-and-control groups.

What does the 8% figure reveal?

The gap between retailer advocacy and advertiser adoption is wide. Target and its peers treat incrementality as the most honest way to value retail media spend, since it strips out sales that would have occurred anyway. Yet the overwhelming majority of Roundel advertisers still measure campaign performance through other means.

McGahee's comments carry weight beyond Target. Retail media networks (the advertising arms that retailers build to sell access to their shoppers and first-party data) have made measurement credibility a central selling point in the competition for brand budgets. An admission that 92% of one major network's advertisers do not treat incrementality as their primary metric signals how much work remains before the industry standardizes on the method.

Why do brands hesitate?

The source points to readiness, not rejection. McGahee suggested advertisers are not yet prepared to depend fully on the metric, even as he expressed confidence in how Roundel applies it. Test-and-control measurement requires brands to hold back ads from comparable shopper groups, a discipline that conflicts with campaigns built to maximize reach at all times.

The stakes are straightforward for marketers deciding where retail budgets go:

• Incrementality isolates the sales an ad caused, not the sales it coincided with.
• Retailers including Target have promoted it for roughly two years as the preferred standard.
• Adoption at Roundel stands at 8% as a primary metric, per McGahee.

The gap sets the agenda for retail media's next phase. If Roundel and its competitors can move that 8% materially higher, incrementality becomes the common currency for proving retail ad value; if not, brands will keep treating it as a secondary check rather than the measure of record.

By Elena Vasquez