Measurement — March 14, 2026 — 7 min read

Holdouts are not optional.

Author

Portrait of Vineet Vijay Vineet Vijay

Published

March 14, 2026

Reading time

7 min

Topic

Measurement

Every quarter, a CMO somewhere is told that holdout testing is too expensive. The argument is always the same: switching off a channel for a few weeks in a few markets costs revenue. The argument is correct.

It is also irrelevant. Without holdouts, every penny you spend is justified by attribution models that nobody fully believes.

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