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MeasurementCase 02 of 05

Experiment arms finer than location error

Assigning experiment arms at a cell grain finer than the delivery channel's location error radius misplaces households across arms. With shared error the misassignment is non-differential (attenuates lift toward null, a power cost); when arms differ in IP-resolvability — multi-family share, carrier NAT, fixed-wireless penetration — the error becomes differential and biases the estimate, not just weakens it.

Class
Case to account for
Affects
2 conversions
01

Detection

Arm-unit equal-area radius smaller than the channel's location error radius; arm-level covariate imbalance on multi-family share or fixed-wireless penetration.

02

Mitigation

01
Randomize at a unit whose radius exceeds the worst error radius in the channel mix (R5 for IP-derived delivery); activate finer inside treated units
02
Block on IP-resolvability and randomize within strata
03
Never run an IP-derived outcome against IP-derived arms — correlated misassignment can manufacture lift rather than attenuate it
03

Affected conversions

IP lookupH3 (probabilistic crosswalk)
OPEN
Point+radiusH3
OPEN