Accretive or accretion means gradual or incremental growth and contribution. I believe using accretive sales and profit growth for advertising success criteria is simple, avoids the downsides of ROI and turns investment into profit which is what a Mature Growth company needs (See corporate life cycle here by Aswath for ‘mature growth’ definition).

Optimizing for ROI boosts apparent ROI merely by reducing the level of investment which could hurt company cash flow. Accretive growth ensures adequate consideration of what the business needs for sustainable cash flow, quantifies this need in real dollars and allows clear answers to “what sales and profit do I generate from shifting $10 million from Instagram reels to TikTok videos?”

Frankly it would do help CMOs gain greater credibility with C-Suite peers, including CFOs, if they can communicate with revenue and profit accretive language than ROI only. It will also help pressure test if an ROI (or ROAS) is logically sound and relevant to the end outcome in mind…..