This feature is currently available for Google Analytics 360 properties only.Incremental metrics (such as conversions and revenue) are the metrics measured by isolating the impact of your ads. These metrics exclude any counts acquired without any ads. Use this report to understand the true impact your ads have on customer actions and determine which marketing efforts actually cause new conversions and true business growth, not just those that would have happened anyway. By understanding what truly drives growth, you can spend your ad budget more effectively.
On this page
- Before you begin
- Understand incremental reporting
- Access your incremental conversions report
- How to interpret the incremental conversions report
Before you begin
To use incremental conversions reporting, consider the following requirements:. These requirements align with the requirements for budgeting features, including the Meridian-based budgeting model.
- Your Google Ads account must be linked to your Google Analytics property.
- Your property must have conversions created.
- You must import at least 2 years of campaign cost data. Learn more about importing campaign data.
- Your property must have at least 2 years of accumulated conversion and revenue data.
Conversions are backfilled with event data when available.
Understand incremental reporting
Incremental conversions quantify how many additional conversions occurred because users saw your ads, which wouldn’t have happened otherwise.
Incremental metrics provide a single, harmonized source of truth for the incremental effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. These metrics are powered by your property’s incremental attribution model, which combines insights from event-level DDA with incremental results from Meridian. Meridian is Google's proprietary Marketing Mix Modeling (MMM) solution which blends MMMs and lift experiments.
Your incremental reporting will show a baseline value. Baseline is the total value driven by your non-paid channels (including any channels without cost data), as calculated by Meridian’s MMM. This baseline value helps you isolate what drives your total business outcome. It is calculated as “Total value = baseline value + incremental value.”
Incremental metrics
This incremental model includes the following metrics across both cross-channel attribution reporting and budgeting tools:
- Incremental Conversions: Incremental conversions are the conversions only caused by the impact of ads. They exclude your baseline conversions acquired without any ads. They show your combined channel performance from across MMM, attribution, and incrementality.
- Incremental Revenue: Incremental revenue is your revenue only caused by the impact of ads. It excludes your baseline revenue acquired without any ads. It expresses your combined channel performance from across MMM, attribution, and incrementality.
- Incremental Return on Ads Spend (iROAS): Incremental return on advertising spend (or iROAS) is the portion of return only caused by the impact of ads. It excludes your baseline return acquired without any ads. This metric expresses your combined channel performance from across MMM, attribution, and incrementality.
- Incremental Cost per Acquisition (iCPA): Incremental cost per acquisition means how much, on average, each of your incremental conversions cost. It excludes your baseline conversions acquired without any ads. It is calculated as: total cost / total number of incremental conversions.
Access your incremental conversions report
Follow these steps to view the Advertising snapshot, where you can find a comprehensive view of the conversions your marketing efforts drive.
- Sign in to your Google Analytics account.
- Select Advertising from the left side panel.
- Select Incremental conversions.
Incremental conversions are also highlighted in the Advertising snapshot:
- Select Advertising from the left side panel.
- Select Advertising snapshot.
How to interpret the incremental conversions report
In your cross-channel reporting, you can compare incremental conversions and attributed conversions, which are shown as “All conversions” in reports. You can view them as answers to 2 different questions:
- Attribution: Which platforms or channels touched this conversion?
- Incrementality: Which platforms or channels actually caused the conversion lift?
Attributed metrics tell us where conversions landed, while incremental metrics tell us what we actually caused. When they differ, that difference is the insight. So when you compare metrics per each channel, you’re asking: Is this channel capturing demand, or creating it? When you put incremental and attributed metrics side by side, the goal is not to make them agree, it’s to read the pattern of divergence.
- Incremental attribution is only available for channels where two years of conversions and cost data is available. All channels that don’t meet these requirements will show a (-) across incremental metrics. However, your property may still have attributed metrics available for these channels.
- Incremental totals and Attributed totals are not expected to match. This is because we exclude any conversions part of your property’s baseline from incremental totals, since by definition, those conversions are not incremental. Baseline conversions are those that were acquired without any ads.
Learn more about the incremental attribution model.
Compare incremental and attributed conversions
Here’s an example of how incremental and attributed conversions can tell different stories for different channels. These differences can help guide budget allocation decisions in Scenario Planner, such as identifying which channels to scale or optimize for efficiency.
| Dimension | All conversions (by conv. time) | Incremental conversions and derived metrics | Insight |
|---|---|---|---|
| Totals | 63,000 | 63,000 | |
| Baseline | (-) | 5,000 | |
| Platform A | 15,000  |
20,000  |
Low attribution and high incrementality Action: Protect your budget and adjust attribution expectations. |
| Platform B | 35,000 |
25,000 |
High attribution and low incrementality Action: Channel is not acquiring new users, but driving users that are already likely to convert. You can use this channel as an efficiency lever, not growth lever. For example, you can narrow targeting or cap frequency. |
| Platform C | 12,000 |
12,500 |
High attribution and incrementality Action: Increase the budget carefully and monitor diminishing returns. |
| Platform D | 1,000 |
500 |
Low attribution and incrementality Action: Ensure that this channel is configured correctly or remove it from your campaign. |