Are Underperforming Campaigns Getting Too Much Credit? Measure With iROAS Instead

By Will Burghes, Head of Professional Services, DV Rockerbox

While traditional return on ad spend provides a view of how much revenue is linked to each ad dollar spent, it doesn’t separate organic revenue from the revenue generated by campaigns. Incrementality isolates the true impact of marketing, and incremental return on ad spend (iROAS) measures media effectiveness based on this lift, allowing marketers to focus budgets on activities that generate new demand.

DV Rockerbox™ offers a unified measurement approach to iROAS. By measuring iROAS through marketing mix modeling (MMM) and incrementality testing, and calibrating multi-touch attribution (MTA) with these results, we help brands optimize ad spend and get real results.

What Is iROAS?

iROAS measures how effectively your advertising campaigns drive additional revenue beyond what would have occurred without your marketing efforts. It differs from traditional ROAS by focusing solely on the incremental revenue that your ads generate, helping you understand the true impact of your marketing spend.

Why iROAS Is Critical for Marketing Efficiency

1. Focus on Revenue Drivers. Isolate your marketing’s incremental impact to determine which campaigns and channels generate additional revenue and avoid over-crediting less effective campaigns with standard ROAS.

2. Optimize Budget Allocation. Direct your budget to channels and campaigns that deliver the most incremental value, ensuring every ad dollar drives real growth.

3. Validate Campaign Effectiveness. Identify top-performing campaigns by comparing incremental returns so that you can maximize the impact of your media investments.

4. Complement Your Attribution Model. Integrate iROAS with MTA for a unified, complete view of your marketing efforts.

How to Calculate iROAS

Calculating iROAS is relatively simple but requires careful setup to maintain accuracy.

iROAS Formula:

iROAS = (Total Revenue - Organic Revenue) / Ad Spend

1. Total Revenue - Organic Revenue: The revenue that can be directly attributed to your marketing campaign, measured through controlled experiments such as geo-lift testing
2. Ad Spend: The total cost of running your campaign.

By using this formula, marketers can calculate the actual return generated by their advertising spend, rather than overestimating its impact by including revenue that would have occurred organically.

How DV Rockerbox Helps You Measure iROAS

DV Rockerbox helps brands measure iROAS as part of our unified measurement by offering:

1. Control Test Setup. To measure iROAS effectively, DV Rockerbox works with your team to design and implement precise, controlled geo-experiments, including geo-lift testing or other incrementality testing methods that isolate the impact of your marketing efforts.
2. Results Analysis. After the test runs, we analyze the results to calculate the incremental revenue the campaign generated and determine your iROAS. You’ll get detailed insights into how much additional revenue your marketing drove so you can decide how to allocate your budget later.
3. Unified Measurement. DV Rockerbox integrates iROAS data with your MMM models to calibrate them against test results that operate as “ground truth.” Our unified product integrates results with MTA, giving you a view of your marketing performance across all channels. This ensures your decision-making is based on a complete and accurate understanding of how each part of your marketing ecosystem contributes to overall performance.
4. Ongoing Strategy Optimization. Measuring iROAS is just the beginning. DV Rockerbox allows you to continuously optimize your campaigns based on iROAS results. Whether you need to scale successful campaigns or refine underperforming ones, we provide the guidance you need to keep improving.

Next Steps

Contact a DV representative.

Learn more about DV Rockerbox.