Target Is Pitching an Ad Metric to Drive Sales, But Most Brands Aren't Fully On Board, Exec Says

A leader in Target's ad business warned marketers they're prioritizing the wrong measurement

Target money — Target's Roundel retail media network held a presentation for advertisers Tuesday.Canva/Getty Images/Target

An executive from Target’s Roundel advertising business said he’s confident in the retailer’s approach to measuring a specific key metric but suggested that advertisers aren’t ready to fully rely on it.

For the past couple of years, Target and other retailers have encouraged advertisers to use incrementality to measure 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 sales across test-and-control groups.

During an event for advertisers in New York on Tuesday, Shawn McGahee, senior director of performance and insights for Roundel, said that only 8% of Roundel’s advertisers are using incrementality measurement as the primary performance metric for their business.

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Mitchell Parton

Mitchell Parton is ADWEEK's senior commerce reporter, covering retail media as well as the rise of agentic and social commerce. Before joining ADWEEK in 2026, he was a reporter at Digiday Media's Modern Retail and before that wrote for several regional publications in Texas.