MNTN uses an industry-standardized approach to randomization that ensures your control group accurately reflects the total audience that can be sampled. This method creates a control group that mirrors the size of your exposed group, allowing you to measure incrementality with complete transparency and without any data biases.
Here's a summary of how MNTN generates randomized control groups:
First, we identify the total audience that matches your prospecting criteria and isolate those who are not exposed to your MNTN ad. This becomes your total available control audience.
Your total available control audience is collected on a rolling daily basis throughout the month to ensure the control audience captures any and all audience changes.
We then create a ratio comparing the size of your exposed audience to the size of your total available control audience.
For example, if your exposed audience consists of 1 million users and your total available control audience is 10 million, the ratio would be 10 to 1.
Next, we order your total available control audience based on their east to west location and only select users from the geos targeted in your campaign to ensure a fair comparison between control and exposed users.
Users are then chosen according to the ratio to form our randomized sample.
In our example, we would select every 10th user to create our final control group. This approach ensures unbiased selection and appropriate ratios based on geographic location.
To create a control group for your incrementality test, your audience size must be at least double the size of your Households Reached. We also recommend leveraging the Available Reach tool in your campaign; the total Available Reach should be at least double the size of your Current Reach across your prospecting campaigns.
For added transparency, you can download the Order ID’s for both your Control Group conversions and Exposed Group conversions from your incrementality dashboard*. This feature enables you to verify your results by cross-referencing the Order IDs with your internal tracking.
💡 Note: Order IDs for control and exposed groups became available in incrementality monthly reports starting in January 2023. To access your historical Exposed Order IDs, use our Conversions Detail tab in our Campaign Reporting.
Our continuous testing has shown that this approach to randomization produces control groups that represent the true average performance of audiences not exposed to your MNTN ads, providing accurate, transparent, and always-on incrementality measurement at no cost.