Proving ROI with Unified Data,
Cross-Channel Insights, and Salesforce Integrations
The ROI Imperative
At last year’s NRF, thousands of executives demanded clearer proof that retail media investments yield real ROI. In 2025, this demand has only intensified: Advertisers want transparency into which ads deliver genuine incremental lifts, and retailers are hungry to prove their networks can deliver on brand objectives. Yet measurement and attribution remain daunting tasks—especially in a world of fragmented data, evolving privacy standards, and multiple channels (online, in-store, mobile).
Enter Salesforce Data Cloud and Agentforce, two emerging solutions that can unlock a more unified and predictive view of campaign performance. By consolidating data in one place and leveraging AI to spot patterns, retailers can evolve beyond surface-level metrics (e.g., last-click ROAS) into deeper insights like incrementality and multi-touch attribution. This post dives into why a next-generation measurement framework is crucial, how to implement it, and what key trends are shaping the conversation at NRF 2025.
Why Old Attribution Models Fall Short
Traditionally, retailers have relied on last-click or channel-level ROAS metrics to gauge success. These snapshots, however, ignore the reality that consumers engage in multi-touch journeys—browsing your website, seeing a banner ad, visiting in-store, and clicking a promotional email, often in varied orders. At best, last-click attribution tells you “who closed the sale,” not “which channels influenced the sale along the way.”
Moreover, marketers increasingly value incrementality measurement, which compares campaign outcomes to a baseline “no-ad” scenario. Incrementality helps separate true campaign-driven lift from organic sales that might have occurred regardless. This method aligns with the IAB’s measurement standards and is fast becoming a must-have for advanced retail media networks.
Bringing It All Together with Salesforce Data Cloud
One of the biggest hurdles in next-generation measurement is combining data from disjointed platforms: e-commerce logs, mobile apps, point-of-sale systems, and third-party ad servers. Salesforce Data Cloud centralizes these disparate sources into a single, real-time data lake, enabling you to establish consistent customer IDs across channels. From there, you can layer on advanced reporting and analytics that track each customer’s journey from first impression to final purchase—helping you ascertain exactly which ads move the needle.
Data Cloud’s built-in connectors simplify the process of piping ad performance metrics back into your CRM, eliminating the need for complicated, piecemeal integrations. Once unified, that data becomes fertile ground for Agentforce, which can automatically highlight underperforming segments or identify new high-value audiences to retarget.
For a broader look at how to build a sophisticated retail media network, see our post “Building a High-Performance Retail Media Network: Key Pillars for 2024.”
The Role of Agentforce in Predictive Attribution
Predictive analytics plays a starring role in “next-gen” measurement, and that’s precisely where Agentforce steps in. Rather than simply reporting on past campaigns, Agentforce uses machine learning to anticipate future outcomes. For instance, it can forecast how a certain audience segment is likely to respond to a new ad creative or campaign format, letting you adjust budgets and targeting strategies before you’ve spent a dollar.
Agentforce can also supercharge incrementality testing by automatically selecting control groups (i.e., segments that do not see your ad) and test groups (segments that do). This approach yields cleaner data on how much lift a campaign truly produces, which you can then visualize in Salesforce’s analytics dashboards. Over time, these predictive insights guide you toward the most profitable ad placements and help you retire underperforming campaigns quickly.
Trends to Watch: Incrementality, In-Store, and Data Clean Rooms
Retailers attending NRF 2025 will hear plenty of buzz around three major measurement trends:
1. Incrementality as the New ROAS
Brands and agencies increasingly insist on incrementality metrics to gauge genuine campaign impact. The more robust your methodology, the more premium ad rates you can command.
2. In-Store Attribution
With in-store screens and point-of-sale targeting on the rise, retailers must merge online and offline data sets. By linking store transactions to digital IDs, you can illustrate how an online ad influences an in-store sale (and vice versa).
3. Data Clean Rooms
As cookies continue to deprecate and privacy laws tighten, data clean rooms allow retailers and brands to securely match data sets for campaign evaluation without sharing raw customer information. Expect many forward-thinking retailers to integrate these with Salesforce Data Cloud for seamless audience creation and measurement.
Operationalizing Next-Gen Measurement
To succeed, you’ll need the right organizational framework, not just technology. First, ensure your marketing, analytics, and IT teams collaborate on shared KPIs (e.g., incremental sales, cost per acquisition). Next, invest in a flexible data architecture—Salesforce Data Cloud plus your chosen ad-serving platform—to unify data and streamline reporting. Finally, treat measurement as a continuous cycle: run a test, gather insights, feed those insights back into Agentforce, optimize, and repeat.
V2, as a specialized Salesforce implementation partner, helps retailers configure these complex workflows—covering everything from data integrations to advanced AI-driven insights. The result is a measurement engine that informs real-time decisions and fosters trust with advertisers who crave transparency.
Building Trust Starts With A Conversation.
Let’s Discuss Your Attribution Roadmap
Measuring retail media success is more critical than ever, and a next-generation approach can provide the clarity and confidence your stakeholders demand. By combining Salesforce Data Cloud for unified data and Agentforce for predictive insights, you’ll be poised to deliver sophisticated attribution models—ranging from multi-touch to incrementality-based.
If you want to elevate your measurement capabilities, book a meeting with us at the NRF 2025 Show, starting January 11. We’ll explore how V2 can help orchestrate a tailor-made retail media measurement framework that ties campaign spend directly to revenue impact—both online and in-store.
