Incubeta this month published a study that lays bare a structural contradiction at the heart of retail and eCommerce marketing: organizations are spending more, reporting success, and simultaneously acknowledging that a meaningful slice of that investment is not working. The research, titled "The Marketer's Confidence Paradox," was released on May 6, 2026, and draws on an independent survey of CMOs and CEOs across the United Kingdom and the United States.

The headline numbers are arresting. According to Incubeta, 70.4% of marketing leaders are confident their budgets are deployed effectively. Yet 41.6% of those same leaders acknowledge that a portion of their investment is not delivering its full value, with measurement limitations cited as the primary reason. Both figures describe the same population at the same moment. That coexistence is what Incubeta calls the Confidence Paradox.

The numbers behind the paradox

The survey findings extend beyond the headline. Budgets are moving in one direction: 73.6% of organizations report increased marketing spending year-on-year, according to Incubeta. That upward trajectory compounds the problem. If a structural inefficiency already exists in how spend is deployed, scaling investment without fixing the underlying measurement issue does not resolve it - it enlarges it.

Simultaneously, 92% of leaders believe their measurement frameworks are precise. Another 79% report that ROI is meeting expectations. Those two figures sit alongside the 41.6% who admit to waste, which means that in a large proportion of organizations, the reporting environment signals health while the more honest self-assessment acknowledges leakage. Incubeta describes the outcome as an "Inefficiency Tax": spend that performs adequately on internal dashboards but does not generate incremental business growth.

The distinction matters. A campaign can meet its ROAS target while capturing demand that would have converted anyway. Channel-level metrics can improve while total business revenue stagnates. According to Incubeta, this is not a hypothetical edge case - it is what the research describes as a consistent pattern observed across retail and eCommerce organizations.

"The confidence paradox exists because we focus on what we can control. We measure what's easy, even when we know deep down that our dashboards can't possibly be telling the whole truth," said Paul Ruscoe, VP of Marketing Intelligence at Incubeta. "The brands that win tomorrow will be the ones that recognize the decisions about goals and demand made upstream matter far more than the tactical adjustments made downstream."

Why the gap persists

The structural explanation Incubeta offers is measurement fragmentation. Marketing now operates across many channels simultaneously - paid search, social, connected television, display, retail media, email - each with its own reporting environment. The temptation, and in most organizations the default, is to rely on what is most accessible: platform-native reporting.

According to Incubeta's weighted average rankings of prioritized measurement methods, individual platform metricsand manual reporting scored 2.6 - the most commonly prioritized approach. Single-touch attribution scored 2.8. Both ranked above marketing mix modeling (MMM) and experimentation, which tied at 3.1 alongside multi-touch attribution. Brand health and survey-based tracking ranked last at 3.9.

The ordering is notable. Platform-native reporting, which is designed to optimize within individual channels rather than across the full customer journey, dominates decision-making. MMM, which Incubeta describes as the gold standard of marketing measurement, occupies a middle position despite its ability to model total business impact. This hierarchy creates a structural bias: the measurement tools used most frequently are the ones least suited to distinguishing new demand from existing demand.

The problem deepens when teams operate in silos. Channels are measured and reported in isolation, making it difficult to connect performance data across the full customer journey. According to Incubeta, only 34.4% of organizations use a unified approach to measuring both short- and long-term impact. The remaining 65.6% are making strategic decisions from a fragmented picture.

This pattern echoes findings PPC Land has tracked across multiple research releases. A TransUnion and EMARKETER study from October 2025 found that 54.1% of marketers reported no improvement in measurement confidence year-over-year, while 49.5% cited fragmented data as the main reason they question measurement accuracy. Cross-channel deduplication issues affected 48% of respondents in that study, and walled-garden reporting limitations were flagged by 40.8%.

The IAB has responded to the measurement gap with infrastructure. In November 2025, the IAB and IAB Europe released formal guidelines for incremental measurement in commerce media, distinguishing incrementality from attribution and ROAS calculations, which show outcomes rather than causality. In April 2026, the IAB published a further white paper arguing that MMM systematically undercounts retail media impact, urging brands to position closed-loop measurement and incrementality testing as primary decision tools rather than supplementary ones. Google, for its part, reduced the minimum budget required to run incrementality experiments from $100,000 to $5,000 in November 2025, significantly lowering the access barrier for smaller advertisers.

The context makes the Incubeta findings timely. Despite expanding infrastructure for more rigorous measurement, most organizations are still relying on measurement approaches that produce partial views.

The AI activation gap

A parallel finding in the research concerns artificial intelligence. The pattern mirrors the Confidence Paradox in structure: high belief, lower execution capability.

According to Incubeta, 77% of marketing leaders believe AI is an effective driver of performance. Only 55% feel confident in their ability to activate it effectively. A further 12% report they have not deployed AI in any aspect of their marketing activity. The 22-percentage-point gap between belief in AI's effectiveness and confidence in its deployment is what Incubeta labels the AI Activation Gap.

The research also identifies where AI is most commonly applied. According to Incubeta, marketing leaders use it predominantly for creative optimization - a tactical application at the execution layer. This contrasts with the more structurally impactful role AI could play if embedded across data pipelines, measurement frameworks, and full-funnel decision-making. Incubeta argues that isolated AI use cases tend to improve efficiency at a tactical level without fundamentally changing how growth is delivered.

The obstacle is not ambition. According to Incubeta, the challenge lies in translating AI into system-wide impact. Without connected and reliable data infrastructure, clear ownership across teams, and alignment between strategy, execution, and measurement, AI risks reinforcing existing inefficiencies rather than correcting them.

This connects to a broader industry debate. In March 2026, Sir Martin Sorrell argued on the Frontier CMO podcast that AI adoption at enterprise scale would not be led by CMOs but compelled by CFOs, citing structural pressures including margin compression and production cycle collapse as the more likely forcing functions. The IAB UK published separate research in May 2026 showing that 95% of UK digital advertising businesses already deploy AI, far ahead of the 16% adoption rate seen across UK businesses generally - but deployment breadth does not resolve the execution depth problem that Incubeta's data surfaces.

Jacques van Niekerk on what comes next

Incubeta's Group CEO frames the findings in terms of structural capability rather than technology adoption. "What this research makes clear is that the next competitive advantage in marketing will not come from spending more or simply adopting the latest technology," said Jacques van Niekerk. "It will come from having the foundations in place to truly understand what is working, what is not, and why."

The foreword to the research document elaborates on the underlying shift. According to van Niekerk, marketing is no longer simply influencing human behavior - it is increasingly shaping how automated systems interpret, prioritize, and act on that behavior. As AI mediates more of the discovery and transaction layer, marketing moves from operating expense toward something closer to a compounding asset. That shift changes the accountability framework. Short-term efficiency optimization, in this view, is no longer sufficient as a strategic objective.

What Incubeta identifies as outperformer characteristics

The research includes a segment on what distinguishes organizations that consistently exceed performance benchmarks. Four characteristics are presented. First, measurement that reflects reality: outperformers move beyond siloed, platform-native reporting and adopt cross-channel, outcome-based frameworks that capture incremental impact and align marketing investment with genuine business outcomes. Second, AI treated as a scalable capability rather than an experimental tool: outperformers build strong data foundations and apply AI across multiple stages of the customer journey, aligning AI initiatives to clear commercial outcomes. Third, a broader definition of performance: rather than optimizing channel-level metrics and short-term efficiency indicators, outperformers focus on incremental growth, customer lifetime value, and long-term demand creation. Fourth, commercial clarity and alignment: marketing is connected to financial outcomes, teams align around shared definitions of success, and value is communicated clearly at leadership level.

Case study evidence within the report illustrates the practical application. Incubeta describes working with Superdrug, where introducing cross-channel measurement and incrementality testing revealed spending that had been classified as high-performing was delivering lower incremental value than reported metrics suggested. After reallocation, Superdrug recorded a 102% increase in total ROAS and a 50% decrease in cost per click. A separate engagement with Imperial Hotels produced a 73% increase in revenue following unification of their search ecosystem and reinvestment into channels identified as genuine growth drivers.

Why this matters for performance marketers

The Confidence Paradox as a concept is not new territory. The measurement fragmentation it describes has been a persistent feature of digital advertising for years. What Incubeta's research adds is current scale data - specifically that the gap has not closed despite increased investment and new technology availability. That finding runs against a natural assumption: that more data and more sophisticated tooling would translate into more accurate performance understanding.

The AI dimension is particularly relevant for the programmatic and performance marketing community. As platforms embed AI more deeply into bidding, targeting, and creative decisions, the question of whether teams can meaningfully oversee and direct those systems becomes more consequential. The IAB Tech Lab has been developing an Agentic RTB Framework to address structural compatibility between AI agents and real-time bidding infrastructure, but the Incubeta data suggests that even at the human-oversight level, nearly half of marketing leaders do not yet feel confident activating AI effectively.

The research also bears on budget allocation conversations. If 41.6% of marketing leaders acknowledge that some of their current spend is not generating full value, and if 73.6% are simultaneously growing their budgets, the mathematical implication is that the absolute volume of misallocated spend is increasing. The Incubeta framing - that this is a measurement visibility problem rather than a capability or effort problem - suggests the structural fix is measurement architecture, not spend level.

Dos and don'ts: closing the confidence gap

Drawn from the patterns and findings in the Incubeta research, the following reflect what the data identifies as practices that separate organizations with accurate performance visibility from those operating with a distorted picture.

Do

  • Prioritize incrementality testing over platform-reported ROAS as the primary signal for budget reallocation decisions - channel metrics show outcomes, not causation
  • Build or adopt a unified measurement framework that connects short-term performance data with long-term growth indicators across all active channels simultaneously
  • Treat marketing mix modeling as a strategic planning tool that sits above individual channel reporting, not as an optional supplement to it
  • Audit existing AI deployments to determine whether they are generating measurable business outcomes or isolated tactical efficiencies that do not scale
  • Align teams around shared definitions of success before deploying new measurement infrastructure - technical capability without organizational alignment produces fragmented outputs
  • Test the assumption that high-performing channels are generating incremental demand rather than capturing conversions that would have occurred regardless of the advertising
  • Set a minimum threshold for cross-channel measurement coverage before increasing overall budget - scaling spend without fixing visibility enlarges the inefficiency, not just the investment
  • Communicate measurement limitations explicitly at leadership level so budget decisions reflect genuine uncertainty rather than false precision

Don't

  • Treat platform-native dashboards as a complete view of marketing performance - they are designed to optimize within individual environments, not to measure total business impact
  • Use single-touch attribution as the primary basis for channel investment decisions in multi-channel environments where the customer journey spans multiple touchpoints
  • Scale AI adoption before the underlying data infrastructure is connected and reliable - AI applied to fragmented data reinforces existing measurement gaps rather than resolving them
  • Interpret ROI meeting expectations as confirmation that investment is fully effective - the research shows 79% report satisfactory ROI while 41.6% simultaneously acknowledge waste
  • Allow measurement to be managed in silos by channel-specific teams without a cross-functional layer that connects performance data across the full customer journey
  • Confuse brand health and survey-based tracking with direct performance measurement - useful for long-term equity signals, it is the lowest-priority tool for operational budget decisions
  • Increase year-on-year budget without first identifying and quantifying where existing spend is not generating incremental impact
  • Assume that high confidence in a measurement framework means the framework is capturing what actually drives growth - confidence and accuracy are not the same variable

Survey methodology

The research was based on an independent survey of CMOs and CEOs across retail and eCommerce organizations in the United Kingdom and the United States. Incubeta commissioned the study to examine the relationship between reported marketing performance and actual business impact, with a particular focus on identifying where confidence in performance diverges from recognized inefficiency.

Timeline

Summary

Who: Incubeta, a global marketing and AI-outcomes agency, with findings drawn from responses by CMOs and CEOs across retail and eCommerce organizations in the UK and US.

What: A research report titled "The Marketer's Confidence Paradox," revealing that 70.4% of marketing leaders are confident their budgets are deployed effectively while 41.6% simultaneously acknowledge that some of that investment is not delivering full value due to measurement limitations. The report also identifies an AI Activation Gap: 77% believe AI drives performance, but only 55% feel confident activating it effectively.

When: The research was published on May 6, 2026.

Where: The survey covered CMOs and CEOs in the United Kingdom and the United States, focused on the retail and eCommerce sectors.

Why: The research exposes a structural disconnect between confidence in marketing performance and actual incremental business impact, rooted in overreliance on platform-native metrics, fragmented measurement architecture, and shallow AI adoption. The findings are relevant to anyone responsible for allocating marketing budgets, justifying spend to senior leadership, or determining whether current measurement practices genuinely capture how growth is created.

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