Holdout group
Also called: Control group
A holdout is a randomly selected set of customers deliberately excluded from an action, kept as the counterfactual. A global holdout, excluded from all activity, measures the total incremental contribution of a growth programme rather than of any single campaign.
Why it matters for ARPU
Without a holdout, a programme reports the revenue it touched, not the revenue it created. Every Markin experiment carries one for exactly this reason.
Related terms
IncrementalityIncrementality is the portion of an outcome that would not have happened without the action.A/B testAn A/B test randomly assigns customers to two or more variants and compares a pre-declared metric between them.ExperimentAn experiment is a controlled release of a candidate action against a randomised holdout, sized in advance so the result can distinguish a real effect from noise.Uplift modelAn uplift model estimates the change in outcome caused by treating a customer, rather than the outcome itself.