This page provides definitions for key terms used throughout the Meridian
GeoX documentation.

## Alpha

Significance level of the test, representing the probability of rejecting
the null hypothesis when it's true, which is referred to as a Type I error.

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## Conversion

The primary KPI variable to be measured. It can be revenue, sales units,
upper-funnel engagement metrics, or anything else that the marketing
intervention may have a causal effect upon.

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## Cooldown

The period after the test period, used to evaluate if there's a delayed impact
of the marketing intervention.

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## Cost per incremental conversion (CpIC)

CpIC is calculated as the inverse of the expected incremental conversion per
dollar (1 / expected ICPD). When revenue data serves as the conversion metric,
this value is equivalent to 1 / expected iROAS. This metric is primarily
utilized to project budget needs for holdback experiments or specific holdback
cells within multi-cell experimental designs. It is not required (and is ignored
) for go-dark or heavy-up experiments (or cells) since those tests measure
existing live campaigns and experiment budget is projected using historical
spend data.

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## Experiment budget

Projected total marketing spend changes due to the marketing intervention
during the test period. When testing with your existing campaigns, the budget is
determined by the size of the treatment group. For example, in go-dark
experiments, a higher budget implies a larger percentage of market holdouts and
larger media disruption. You may input a maximum allowed experiment budget per
geo study design.

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## Geo unit

The geographic level at which the experiment is designed and executed, defined
by regional market boundaries. While Meridian GeoX provides the flexibility to
bring your own geo units, our recommendation is to use *designated market area
(DMA)* for the US and *geographic market area (GMA)* for non-US regions. If
these are not feasible, use aggregated local units such as administrative
geographies (for example, provinces, states, or regions) in non-US regions.

**Recommendation for market selection (US and International)**: Select your
geographic units to minimize spillover effects between regions. Utilize market
areas constructed from aggregated local units, such as cities and postal codes,
where boundaries are intentionally drawn to avoid major commuting corridors.
Ensure boundaries don't cross well-known commuting patterns to prevent daily
travel from causing activity to spill over between treatment and control
geographies.

### Control geos

The group of geographic units that doesn't receive the marketing intervention,
serving as the baseline to estimate the counterfactual or what happens if no
marketing intervention is added of treatment geos.

### Excluded geos

These geos are similar to control geos that don't receive the marketing
intervention. However, they're completely excluded from the test and don't
contribute to the counterfactual prediction.

### Treatment geos

Group of geographic units that receives the marketing intervention being tested,
such as a heavy-up or go-dark.

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## Incremental conversion

The lift in business results, such as transactions or revenue, that results from
the marketing intervention, calculated using counterfactual modeling.

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## Incremental conversion per dollar (ICPD)

Indicates the efficiency of gaining incremental conversion with your marketing.
Numerically, equals incremental conversion normalized by ads spend. It's
equivalent to incremental return on ads spend (iROAS) if revenue data is used as
conversion.

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## Minimum detectable effect (MDE)

The smallest percentage uplift that the experiment is statistically capable of
detecting within the chosen statistical significance level, with the given
treatment and control geo assignment, taking into consideration the experiment
configuration---for example, the period of experiment or size of the treatment
group.

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## Power

The probability that the experiment will correctly detect an incremental
conversion if one truly exists, which is the ability to avoid an inconclusive
readout.

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## Pretest

The period before the experiment begins, used to gather historical geo-level
time series data to find study designs.

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## Test

The active period of the experiment during which the marketing intervention is
applied to the treatment geos.