Observed Signal · Nov 3, 2026 · Podcast · Source: Adweek · Impact: 2/5 · Sentiment: Positive
Liquid Death and Ibotta Execs on Incrementality Over ROAS
In an Adweek podcast episode recorded at Brandweek 2026, Ibotta CEO Bryan Leach and Liquid Death's Chief Media and Digital Commerce Officer Benoit Vatere discuss the limitations of ROAS in measuring promotional effectiveness for CPG brands. They advocate for incrementality as a truer measure, using matched-audience testing to identify genuinely incremental sales and cost per incremental dollar to protect margins. The conversation covers optimizing promotional spend across retail channels, reducing customer churn, growing household penetration, and reallocating budgets based on real-time sales signals. They emphasize the importance of third-party verification to build trust in retail media results.
The article discusses measurement best practices for performance marketing, highlighting the shift to incrementality, which is relevant but not a breaking news or major industry event.
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Key Takeaways & Evidence Grounding
- Ibotta CEO Bryan Leach and Liquid Death CMO Benoit Vatere discussed incrementality versus ROAS at Brandweek 2026.
- The podcast episode was released by Adweek on November 3, 2026.
- Ibotta reaches over 200 million consumers and has surpassed 50 million app downloads.
- Ibotta powers digital offer programs for Walmart, DoorDash, and Instacart.
- Bryan Leach led Ibotta through the largest tech IPO in Colorado history in 2024.
Connected Companies & Entities
4 Entities mapped“Ibotta is a performance marketing platform delivering digital promotions to over 200 million consumers, with over 50 million app downloads, ...”
“Ibotta powers digital offer programs for major brands, including Walmart.”
“Ibotta powers digital offer programs for major brands, including DoorDash.”
“Ibotta powers digital offer programs for major brands, including Instacart.”
Ontology Mapping & Concepts
Related Market Signals & Shifts
Recent verified developments and strategic activity across this market segment.
Liquid Death Prioritizes Incrementality to Measure Sales
This AdExchanger Talks podcast features Benoit Vatere, Chief Media & Digital Commerce Officer at Liquid Death, discussing the brand’s approach to measurement. Vatere argues CPG sales largely occur at retail checkout and that channel-specific metrics like ROAS are insufficient on their own; he links ROAS to new-to-brand metrics as a proxy for incrementality. Liquid Death focuses marketing toward light and lapsed buyers rather than only superfans. The piece also notes the brand’s partnership with performance-marketing platform Ibotta for always-on incrementality testing and raises the prospect that agentic AI could change grocery shopping dynamics between consumers, brands and bots.
Liquid Death Pilots Ibotta LiveLift for Incrementality
Liquid Death is piloting Ibotta’s LiveLift performance measurement tool to measure near‑real‑time incrementality of retail promotions. LiveLift uses shopper data from Ibotta’s app and retail partners (Walmart, Instacart, DoorDash, Dollar General) to compare test and control groups and estimate incremental cans sold that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise. Liquid Death’s chief media officer, Benoit Vatere, says the insight lets the brand shift budget quickly — week to week or day to day — toward retailers, regions, or tactics that produce incremental volume at acceptable cost, and pause or change offers when incremental cost rises. Ibotta founder and CEO Bryan Leach framed the approach as part of outcomes‑based buying, where brands define pay‑for results and let incrementality data drive media allocation.
Marketers Seek Clean Incrementality Measurements
An ADWEEK House panel co-hosted with Fetch examined the challenges brands face when measuring incremental impact from marketing. Panelists from CAVA, Nestlé, The Hershey Company, Haleon, Digitas and Fetch emphasized that incrementality is contested because consumer behavior is fragmented, teams often claim the same outcomes, and measurement signals from partners can conflict. Speakers argued randomized controlled trials remain the most reliable method but require discipline and time (brands may need six to eight months to see impact). Melissa Berger noted only about 8% of brands have formal incrementality programs. The discussion stressed the need for honest communication between brands and partners, careful experimental design, aligned timelines and realistic expectations about what measurement can prove.
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