Upptic’s Warren Woodward on Leveraging Incrementality for App Growth

A Strategic Framework for CMOs and Growth Leaders Navigating Today’s Fragmented Mobile Ecosystem

Disclaimer: The opinions represented here are those of the individual and do not necessarily represent those of their current or former employer.

In today’s complex mobile marketing landscape, one of the toughest challenges is determining which ad efforts truly drive new growth. We sat down with Warren Woodward, Co-Founder and Chief Growth Officer of Upptic, a mobile UA agency and UA automation platform, to discuss how incrementality testing is redefining performance marketing. Warren has led user acquisition and growth for major mobile games, and he shared practical insights on how marketing leaders can use incrementality to optimize budgets and improve ROI.

Watch the full interview below, or read on for a selection of key takeaways.

Key Takeaways 

1. Tailor goals to each channel’s incremental value to optimize spend. Analyze how much incremental lift each channel provides and set performance targets accordingly rather than relying on raw ROAS alone.
   
   
2. Use neutral test groups for accurate incrementality testing. Ensuring your test and control groups are neutral yields trustworthy results you can act on with confidence.
   
   
3. Reallocate budget away from non-incremental campaigns. Be prepared to shift spend from those low-impact areas to higher-impact ones. Marketers who routinely do this see higher overall ROAS and have freed up millions in budget.
   
   
4. Translate incrementality insights for non-marketers by showing real user experiences. Help CFOs and other stakeholders understand your decisions by demonstrating what users actually see. For instance, show an intrusive ad that’s yielding “conversions” without intent – seeing the poor user experience makes it clear why you’d cut that spend.
   
   
5. Make incrementality testing a regular habit in your growth strategy. As marketing diversifies across channels and privacy changes limit tracking, incrementality is becoming a default practice. Leading app teams are building incrementality into their playbooks now to stay ahead of the curve.

1. Calibrate Marketing Goals to Channel Incrementality

Mobile marketers often discover that certain “high ROAS” channels are piggybacking on existing demand. By identifying these cases, you can redirect spend to truly additive channels. Warren is a big proponent of this sort of testing, arguing that the real work begins when teams look beyond surface-level metrics and start questioning what each channel is contributing.

“We know intrinsically that not all advertising channels are the same as far as your interaction with them and how it might compel you to install a product. Usually a new partner has data telling them Channel A has 120% ROAS, Channel B 80%, therefore A is better than B. So a lot of times, broaching incrementality is digging in and talking about: What is this ad unit versus that ad unit? I like to frame it as: picture ad unit A versus ad unit B. For an end user, do you think they’re driving the same value? Even if they show similar attributed results, this is why we might treat them a little differently and set our success targets a little differently for each.”

For example, a well-known study found that when eBay turned off its branded search ads, organic search results picked up almost all the traffic, leaving overall visits “virtually unchanged”. In other words, those paid brand keyword ads were delivering almost no net-new users. Armed with this mindset, marketing leaders can make smarter budget decisions. Rather than blindly chasing channels with the highest reported ROAS, they set differentiated benchmarks based on true lift. If an app install campaign on a certain network is only bringing in users who would have converted organically, a CMO might raise the ROI target for that channel or cap its spend.

2. Design Lift Tests with Neutral, Representative Audiences

According to Woodward, one common pitfall is segmenting your test audience in a way that skews the results – for instance, only targeting your most active users or highest spenders in either the test or control group. This can lead to misleading conclusions. Marketing execs should ensure that lift tests use neutral, randomized audience splits, so that the only meaningful difference between groups is exposure to the campaign.

“I you’re trying to identify an audience for lift testing, my advice is usually to make that segment as neutral as possible. Meaning you just want a clean control and test group. You also want to avoid doing self-selecting groups, like making a segment of your top payers or anything like this. I’d recommend making as neutral a segment as possible for your holdout and your test group.”

 A good example comes from top mobile gaming companies that run continuous A/B tests across their user base (or even across similar game titles) to accurately measure lift. WildCard Games, for instance, emphasizes running changes concurrently on one set of users vs. a holdout set to get “apples-to-apples” results and avoid confounding factors. Methodology matters – a clean experiment design today will save you from chasing wrong strategies tomorrow. The bottom line for marketing leaders is to institutionalize proper testing practices – ensure every incrementality experiment is set up fairly, so you can trust the results and act decisively.

Ready to unlock higher ROAS through smarter testing? Adikteev empowers mobile marketers with robust incrementality-focused re-engagement campaigns and analytics. Contact us to find out how Adikteev can help you identify what truly drives growth and double down on what works.

Pivot Fast When Incrementality Shows What’s Not Working

What do you do when an incrementality test comes back with negative lift? Act immediately on those insights. Woodward says one of the biggest benefits of incrementality testing is uncovering wasted spend so you can cut it or redeploy it to more effective channels. Top marketing executives use negative lift results as a mandate to rebalance budgets and raise the bar on underperforming channels. Warren noted that he’s seen certain channels become “repeat offenders” – time after time, when tested, these channels show low or zero incremental contribution. In such cases, leading teams will aggressively pull back spend on that channel and/or demand much higher ROI from it before considering further investment. 

“There’s a couple of repeat offender channels that we often see when people do these tests – the patterns are the same. Sometimes you can even predict it once you’ve been through a few. Very often, once the process is complete, the budget will be more aggressively moved away from a channel and/or the ROAS target for that channel will be moved up (increased) if it’s found that there’s a negative lift.” 

Proactive budget reallocation can significantly improve marketing efficiency. In practice, this might mean shifting spend from a low-incrementality source, like a network driving installs that mostly poach existing users, into a channel with untapped audiences.These kinds of wins add straight to the bottom line. The key is having the courage to trust the incrementality data over intuition or historical habit. Smart marketing leaders cultivate a culture that celebrates killing campaigns that aren’t incrementally profitable, freeing up resources to invest in strategies that truly drive growth.

Get Buy-In by Showcasing the User’s Experience

Senior marketers – especially at the VP or CMO level – must be adept at communicating the value of incrementality in terms that resonate with finance, executive, and product teams. Warren’s advice is to “make it practical” and use concrete examples rather than abstract metrics. One effective approach is to literally show colleagues what a given ad or user experience looks like. If an incrementality test indicates that a certain channel is producing a lot of non-incremental installs (e.g. it’s “poaching” organic users), there’s usually a reason – perhaps the ad unit targets users who were already searching for the app, or it’s using a misleading tactic. By pulling up a real example of that ad experience, you can demonstrate why its conversions weren’t truly earned.

“A very simple thing to do is literally display what the ad units are. For example, if it’s video ads auto-loading the app store – kind of forcing a click where there’s no human intent – or maybe a bunch of intrusive ads on the same webpage, I’ll show the other stakeholders and say, ‘Look, yes, we’re removing the budget or changing the target for this. I know the numbers looked good before, but this is the actual experience of the ad. If you saw this ad, or if one of our customers did, do you think this is actually driving clear intent?’ Removing it from the abstract data on a spreadsheet to the actual end user experience of the ad is often a good way to start the conversation about either positive or negative incrementality with a non-UA stakeholder.”

The strategy can work in reverse to justify more investment: show leadership a particularly engaging ad experience on a channel that’s driving genuine new customers, and tie it to the lift data. Overall, translating incrementality into plain-English stories and visuals can bridge the gap between marketing analytics and executive decision-making. When other stakeholders see what the user sees, they better appreciate why incrementality-informed changes are the right move for the business. Effective communication of incrementality wins hearts and wallets – making it easier to secure a budget for the things that truly work.

Make Incrementality Testing Part of Your Ongoing Growth Playbook

Incrementality is becoming a fundamental part of modern mobile marketing strategy, and forward-thinking teams are embracing it as a continuous practice. Warren predicts that incrementality will play an ever-larger, more consistent role in user acquisition moving forward. External pressures like privacy regulations and tracking limitations have forced marketers to find alternative ways to measure success. Additionally, the marketing mix for apps has expanded. It’s not just standard mobile ads anymore; you have retargeting, cross-promotion, CTV ads, influencer campaigns, and more, all interacting in complex ways. Incrementality testing gives clarity in this omnichannel world, helping teams avoid double-counting conversions and understand the real contribution of each channel.

“Incrementality is going to be playing a much larger and more consistent role in the future of user acquisition, across devices and across genres. We saw hints of this with the implementation of SKADNetwork on iOS years back, where all of a sudden teams were like, ‘Oh crap, I need to figure out a different way to measure this without perfect data.’ And that kind of tested the muscle for teams... Some years back, it was more like, ‘If I need to use incrementality to work with a channel, I’m just not going to work with that channel. I don’t want to think that hard or develop new processes; I just want the things I can cleanly measure in my MMP.’ So I would say it’s clear that it’s already here, and it’s now more of a default in especially large teams’ playbooks.”

Adikteev has worked with clients like Clawee (a popular mobile game) to implement robust re-engagement campaigns measured by incrementality, resulting in the client exceeding their revenue targets (Clawee saw a 3× increase in iROAS). The broader industry is moving this direction too: recent surveys indicate that a majority of large app publishers now run some form of routine lift testing to guide budget allocation. By fostering an incrementality-first culture, you ensure your marketing investments are continually optimized for real impact. In short, those who master incrementality will have a competitive edge – they’ll spend smarter, adapt faster, and ultimately drive more sustainable growth in an era where every dollar counts.

Beyond Basic Testing

As Woodward’s insight attest, incrementality is about truth in advertising: understanding what really works and investing more in it. It brings a higher degree of accountability and confidence to marketing spend. For VPs of Marketing, CMOs, and growth leaders, it’s an opportunity to elevate marketing from a cost center to a proven revenue driver with clear contribution to the bottom line. So, start that next channel experiment, challenge a long-held assumption, or set up a meeting with finance to walk through an incrementality report. And for more from Warren Woodward, follow him on LinkedIn and visit Upptic.com.

Ready to supercharge your app growth with incrementality at the forefront? Adikteev can help you make it happen. From advanced re-engagement campaigns to lift measurement tools, we provide the technology and expertise to ensure your marketing truly moves the needle. Contact us today and learn how our data-driven approach can turn incrementality from a buzzword into your secret weapon for scalable growth.