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Design a feed ads A/B test with guardrails

Last updated: Mar 29, 2026

Quick Overview

This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in experimental design, causal inference, statistical power analysis, and product-metric trade-offs within the Analytics & Experimentation domain, and is commonly asked to assess the ability to increase monetization while protecting user and creator experience.

  • hard
  • Meta
  • Analytics & Experimentation
  • Data Scientist

Design a feed ads A/B test with guardrails

Company: Meta

Role: Data Scientist

Category: Analytics & Experimentation

Difficulty: hard

Interview Round: Onsite

You plan to insert one extra ad every 8 organic posts in the main feed. Design the experiment: (a) unit of randomization (user-level vs session-level) and why, (b) primary metrics (ad revenue per user) and guardrails (session length, 7-day retention, creator impressions, complaint rate), (c) power analysis given a +2.0% revenue MDE and 0.8% SD at user-day granularity, (d) SRM checks and how you’d detect novel-ad novelty effects, (e) ramp strategy and geographic/age holdouts, and (f) a long-term holdback to catch delayed churn. How will you address network spillovers (users sharing screenshots of ads) and avoid biased estimates from dynamic ranking reacting to the treatment?

Quick Answer: This question evaluates a data scientist's competency in experimental design, causal inference, statistical power analysis, and product-metric trade-offs within the Analytics & Experimentation domain, and is commonly asked to assess the ability to increase monetization while protecting user and creator experience.

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Meta
Oct 13, 2025, 9:49 PM
Data Scientist
Onsite
Analytics & Experimentation
1
0

Experiment Design: Insert One Extra Ad Every 8 Organic Posts in Main Feed

Context

You want to increase ad load by inserting one additional ad for every 8 organic posts in the main feed. The goal is to evaluate impact on revenue while protecting user experience and creator ecosystem health.

Tasks

(a) Choose the unit of randomization (user-level vs session-level) and justify.

(b) Define primary metrics (e.g., ad revenue per user) and guardrail metrics (e.g., session length, 7-day retention, creator impressions, complaint rate), including directionality and decision thresholds.

(c) Perform a power analysis given a +2.0% MDE on revenue with a 0.8 SD at user-day granularity. State assumptions and alternative interpretations if needed. Include variance reduction methods.

(d) Specify SRM checks and how you would detect and handle “novelty effects” of the new ad (early-time vs steady-state responses).

(e) Propose a ramp strategy and the use of geographic/age holdouts.

(f) Plan a long-term holdback to detect delayed churn.

Additionally: Address possible network spillovers (e.g., users share screenshots of ads) and how to avoid biased estimates from dynamic ranking reacting to the treatment.

Solution

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