How Axel Arigato Used Incrementality Testing to Refine Their Growth Strategy
Axel Arigato is a contemporary fashion and sneaker brand born at the intersection of streetwear, music, and culture. As growth accelerated, the team wanted to ensure that scaling their digital investments would translate into sustainable, profitable growth — not just higher ad spend. That's when they turned to Dema.
The Challenge
Axel Arigato's performance marketing team had already built efficient acquisition funnels, but scaling further posed a key challenge: increasing spend typically lowers ROAS, and it's not always clear when more budget actually adds value — or just drives cannibalization. They wanted data-driven clarity on three fronts:
Meta scaling potential
Would higher budgets drive new incremental conversions or just higher costs?
Google scaling efficiency
Could Google's ecosystem absorb more investment profitably?
Branded search incrementality
Was branded search spend as effective as it looked in-platform?
The Solution
A series of two-cell scaling tests were designed to isolate the incremental effect of extra spend — one group received the increased budget (treatment), while the other remained steady (control).
Scaling Meta Spend
Meta budgets were increased by 33%, lowering the expected ROAS target. Despite the spend increase, there was no significant incremental lift. The additional budget delivered little new value, indicating overspend and diminishing returns on Meta at current saturation levels.
Scaling Google Spend
Using the same test design, Google Ads budgets were increased by 33%. Google proved capable of scaling profitably within the tested range, with an incremental epROAS exceeding 100% — meaning every additional dollar invested generated more than a dollar in incremental profit.
Evaluating Branded Search
Incrementality testing revealed that branded search's true incremental ROAS was roughly 9x lower than in-platform reports suggested. Even so, its effective profit ROAS remained well above 100%, confirming that despite over-attribution, branded search was still a highly profitable investment.
The Impact
Through these experiments, Axel Arigato gained a clearer understanding of where their marketing spend truly drives profit — and where it doesn't. Meta showed limited incremental opportunity at current levels, Google showed clear headroom for profitable scaling, and branded search had lower true incrementality but remained profit-positive. With Dema's unified measurement approach — combining incrementality testing, MMM, and attribution modeling — Axel Arigato can now make confident, profit-based budget decisions across platforms.
Ready to scale profitably?