{"paper":{"title":"Variance Reduction for Heavy-Tailed Monetization Metrics in Ranking Experiments via Post-Stratification","license":"http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/","headline":"","cross_cats":["stat.ML"],"primary_cat":"cs.LG","authors_text":"Aleksei Ustimenko, Neeti Pokharna, Olivier Jeunen, Yatharth Saraf","submitted_at":"2026-06-02T18:14:14Z","abstract_excerpt":"Online evaluation of ranking and retrieval systems often relies on downstream monetization metrics such as app revenue or creator earnings. These metrics are typically heavy-tailed, with a small fraction of users dominating both mean and variance, leading to low statistical power and unreliable conclusions in A/B experiments -- especially under limited traffic.\n  We present a practical framework for variance reduction in online experiments by combining post-stratification with CUPED. Our approach leverages pre-experiment covariates to improve the sensitivity of monetization experiments without"},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"2606.04110","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/2606.04110/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}