Is retail media conquesting worth it?

Bidding on competitors’ keywords can get expensive, but in some cases, it may turn out to be money well spent.

For a large health and wellness brand, this method proved to be the most efficient way to drive incremental sales but was masked by low return on advertising spend (ROAS).

While the brand’s team expected the last-touch attribution would overstate performance on their own branded keywords, they didn’t expect that it would be understating the value of conquesting. The high cost-per-click (CPC) and low conversion rate of conquesting contributed to a low ROAS, but from an incrementality perspective, these were some of the most efficient dollars the brand spent.

Measuring efficiency with ROAS can mask the incrementality of conquesting strategies. Incrementality-based measurement doesn’t just identify areas where performance is overstated by ROAS, but helps to find pockets that last-touch attribution misses.