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Incrementality

Know which partners drive sales.
And which ones ride your brand search.

Attribution tells you who touched a conversion. Incrementality tells you whether touching it mattered. Trcker runs live holdout tests per partner with full statistical rigor — so you stop paying for conversions that would have happened anyway.

The measurement gold standard, built in.

Randomized holdouts are what Google, Meta, and every data-driven brand use internally. Most tracking platforms don't ship it. Trcker does — one click per partner, and it's running.

1

Start a holdout

From Reports / Incrementality, click 'Start a holdout.' Pick a partner, optionally scope to a specific offer, set the percentage (10% is the default). Trcker starts diverting that slice of traffic immediately.

2

Randomization without degrading UX

A deterministic hash of each click decides whether it lands in the treated group or the held-out control. The held-out clicks still redirect to your offer normally — the visitor's experience is unchanged. Only the attribution flag differs.

3

Nightly measurement

Every night at 07:00 UTC, Trcker computes treated CVR vs holdout CVR per partner, runs a two-proportion z-test, and bounds the lift with a Wald 95% confidence interval. Results appear on the Incrementality dashboard the next morning.

4

Revenue-impact chart

Three summary cards show total incremental revenue across significant partners, revenue at risk from partners with near-zero lift, and total measured treatment revenue. Per-partner horizontal bars show what you paid vs what the partner actually drove.

What you'll surface that attribution can't

Every partner with an active holdout gets a significance badge: Incremental (green), Not incremental (red), Not significant (grey), or Pending. The badge plus the dollar-impact chart tells you exactly where to cut, where to double down, and where to wait.

Partners who look high-value under last-click but have near-zero causal lift (you're paying for conversions that happen anyway)
Partners whose lift is anti-incremental — actively reducing conversion rate vs no-exposure control
Partners with positive, statistically-significant lift — the ones worth every dollar you pay them
Revenue at risk — the total you pay to non-incremental partners each month
Partners below the volume threshold where a holdout can't reach significance — tagged 'pending' until sample size grows
The specific conversion-rate delta (treatment minus holdout) and its confidence interval
Per-offer incrementality — different products may have different lift profiles for the same partner
Historical trend — the same partner's lift over time, not just the current window

Trcker Incrementality vs. "we use attribution"

Attribution only
Trcker Incrementality
What it measures
Who touched a conversion (correlation)
Whether touching it caused the conversion (causation)
Setup effort
Traditional MMP-based incrementality: $30K+/yr, integration team, 90 days to first result
One click per partner. First result the next morning. Included on every plan.
Statistical rigor
Hand-rolled pivot tables; significance tested by eyeballing
Two-proportion z-test + Wald 95% CI + significance badge on every partner
Partner UX
Geo-freeze a region and hope the partner doesn't notice
Held-out clicks redirect normally; partner sees identical traffic volume. Invisible by design.
Dashboard
Excel file shared over email
Revenue-impact chart with summary cards + per-partner bars. Screenshot-ready for demos.

Frequently asked questions

What's the difference between attribution and incrementality?

Attribution assigns credit for conversions that happened. Incrementality asks whether the credit is deserved. A partner can touch 20% of conversions (attribution) but only cause 2% of them (incrementality). The gap is where overpayment lives.

Won't I lose conversions by holding out traffic?

Yes — that's the measurement cost. A 10% holdout on a $100K/month partner means about $10K of potential commissions flow into the control group. In exchange, you find out whether the other $90K is real. If the answer is 'mostly happens anyway,' you save the full spend going forward. It's cheap insurance.

How much volume do I need for a result to be significant?

Depends on your baseline CVR. At 3% baseline CVR, you need about 45,000 clicks to detect a 10% lift at 95% confidence. Below that threshold, lift numbers are directional but not statistically proven. Trcker shows 'pending' for low-volume partners rather than faking a significant result.

Is my partner going to notice the holdout?

No. Held-out clicks redirect to your offer normally. The partner sees the same click count they always did. Only the attribution and conversion-rate calculation differ. This is what makes the measurement valid — if partners could see the holdout, they'd route their best traffic away from it.

What do I do with a partner who shows non-incremental lift?

Pause, renegotiate, or restructure. A partner driving zero real incremental conversions at your payout rate is the same as paying for organic traffic. Trcker's Autopilot reference agent can pause partners with statistically significant non-positive lift automatically — or you can review manually each month.

Can agents query incrementality data?

Yes. The get_incrementality_lift MCP tool returns per-partner treated/holdout CVRs, lift percentage, Wald 95% CI, and p-value. Filter to significantOnly=true to get just the rows worth acting on.

Related features

Prove which spend is working.

Incrementality holdouts are included on every plan. Start one in 60 seconds from the dashboard.

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