What if one of your highest-performing media channels is one you’re actively underinvesting in?
New research from Measured, one of January Digital’s trusted measurement partners, suggests it’s more common than brands realize.
Measured recently analyzed performance across 130 ecommerce brands and found a surprising disconnect. While Snapchat represented just 5% of social ad spend, it delivered a 19.3% higher incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) than the blended social average. Brands investing in Snapchat also saw a 12.9% higher incremental return across their broader search and social mix.
The findings suggest Snapchat deserves a second look, but they also raise a broader question: How many budget decisions are being shaped by an incomplete view of performance?
At January Digital, incrementality testing is one of the core ways we help clients make more confident investment decisions. Rather than relying on attribution alone, it reveals which media is truly driving incremental business results, giving leaders a more complete view of performance across their marketing mix.
The Findings
The Measured study isn’t evidence that Snapchat suddenly became a better advertising platform. It’s indicative of what brands uncover when they evaluate performance through an incrementality lens rather than attribution alone.
The research identified a meaningful halo effect, where investment in Snapchat improved incremental performance across a brand’s broader search and social mix. Because Snapchat isn’t always the final touchpoint before a purchase, those gains rarely appear in platform reporting or last-click attribution. The study also found that Snapchat adoption among Measured customers increased 11.1%, while median incremental ROAS improved 36.2% following investments in AI-powered automation and new advertising capabilities.
Looking Beyond Snapchat
Snapchat is just one example of the opportunities incrementality testing can help brands identify.
Our own client work has produced similar insights. For one apparel client, geo-based incrementality testing revealed that Nonbrand Performance Max delivered approximately 5x higher incremental ROAS than Meta Prospecting, leading to budget reallocations that helped the brand exceed its Marketing Efficiency Ratio goal by 6%. During Steve Madden‘s “Never Miss a Beat” campaign, incrementality measurement identified Pinterest as the channel with the highest incremental ROAS. At the same time, TikTok increased incremental ROAS by 30%, insights that would have been difficult to uncover through platform reporting alone.
The takeaway isn’t that brands should spend more on Snapchat, Pinterest, or any single platform. It’s that better measurement leads to better investment decisions, helping brands allocate budget to the channels that create the greatest incremental business impact.
What This Means for Brands
While Snapchat is the subject of Measured’s research, the implications extend well beyond a single platform. The way brands evaluate performance directly influences where they invest, and as customer journeys become more complex, relying on a single attribution model creates blind spots that can hide meaningful growth opportunities.
Instead of asking which platform received the last click, brands should ask which channels are expanding their customer base, influencing purchase decisions, and driving growth that wouldn’t have happened otherwise. Those insights lead to stronger media planning, more efficient spending, and sustainable growth over time.
That’s why attribution and incrementality should work together, not in isolation. Looking at both provides a more complete picture of performance, helping brands validate where current investments are working, uncover opportunities that might otherwise be overlooked, and build a stronger foundation for future planning.
The brands that outperform won’t simply be the ones investing in different channels. They’ll be the ones making better investment decisions because they have a clearer understanding of what’s actually driving growth.
