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Fair Effect Attribution in Parallel Online Experiments

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Listed:
  • Alexander Buchholz
  • Vito Bellini
  • Giuseppe Di Benedetto
  • Yannik Stein
  • Matteo Ruffini
  • Fabian Moerchen

Abstract

A/B tests serve the purpose of reliably identifying the effect of changes introduced in online services. It is common for online platforms to run a large number of simultaneous experiments by splitting incoming user traffic randomly in treatment and control groups. Despite a perfect randomization between different groups, simultaneous experiments can interact with each other and create a negative impact on average population outcomes such as engagement metrics. These are measured globally and monitored to protect overall user experience. Therefore, it is crucial to measure these interaction effects and attribute their overall impact in a fair way to the respective experimenters. We suggest an approach to measure and disentangle the effect of simultaneous experiments by providing a cost sharing approach based on Shapley values. We also provide a counterfactual perspective, that predicts shared impact based on conditional average treatment effects making use of causal inference techniques. We illustrate our approach in real world and synthetic data experiments.

Suggested Citation

  • Alexander Buchholz & Vito Bellini & Giuseppe Di Benedetto & Yannik Stein & Matteo Ruffini & Fabian Moerchen, 2022. "Fair Effect Attribution in Parallel Online Experiments," Papers 2210.08338, arXiv.org.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2210.08338
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    2. Herve Moulin, 2004. "Fair Division and Collective Welfare," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262633116, December.
    3. Victor Chernozhukov & Denis Chetverikov & Mert Demirer & Esther Duflo & Christian Hansen & Whitney Newey, 2017. "Double/Debiased/Neyman Machine Learning of Treatment Effects," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 261-265, May.
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    5. Victor Chernozhukov & Denis Chetverikov & Mert Demirer & Esther Duflo & Christian Hansen & Whitney Newey & James Robins, 2016. "Double/Debiased Machine Learning for Treatment and Causal Parameters," Papers 1608.00060, arXiv.org, revised Dec 2017.
    6. Guido W. Imbens, 2004. "Nonparametric Estimation of Average Treatment Effects Under Exogeneity: A Review," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 86(1), pages 4-29, February.
    7. Heejung Bang & James M. Robins, 2005. "Doubly Robust Estimation in Missing Data and Causal Inference Models," Biometrics, The International Biometric Society, vol. 61(4), pages 962-973, December.
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