Holdout Test
Withholds a marketing intervention from a randomly-selected group to measure incremental lift.
Last updated: 2026-05-04
Definition
The simplest causal experiment: split your audience randomly, show the ad to one group, suppress it from the other, measure the conversion-rate gap. The gap IS the incremental lift. Cleaner than DiD because randomization eliminates confounders. Limited by platforms — Meta and Google offer programmatic holdouts (Brand Lift studies, Conversion Lift) that ship the math for you.
How it applies in India
No India-specific behavior.
Related terms
- IncrementalityThe lift caused BY a marketing intervention, vs. what would have happened without it.
- Causal InferenceStatistical methods that estimate causal effects from observational or experimental data.
- Difference-in-Differences (DiD)A causal method that compares the change in outcome over time between a treated group and a control group.
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