Scalable Network-Aware Experiment Design for Two-Sided Marketplaces

Abstract

Measuring causal effects in networked two-sided marketplaces is challenging due to treatment interference between market participants on different sides. When treatment is applied to one side (e.g., job seekers), their interactions with the other side (e.g., job posters) introduce spillover effects that violate the Stable Unit Treatment Value Assumption (SUTVA) and bias causal estimates. While cluster-based randomization mitigates this problem, prior approaches struggle with a fundamental trade-off: reducing spillover requires isolated clusters that will reduce the number of qualifying clusters, which decreases statistical power. This paper introduces EgoCluster V3, an iterative clustering algorithm that reduces spillover by 3x compared to prior versions while preserving node coverage and doubling test power. We further introduce MultiEgoCluster, which extends V3 through a two-stage procedure that first groups highly connected egos into multi-ego clusters before applying the iterative clustering algorithm. This achieves an additional ~56% spillover reduction and ~38% increase in sample size. Both methods are deployed in production at LinkedIn and have systematically enabled high-impact two-sided marketplace experiments. Since residual bias cannot be fully eliminated through clustering alone, we derive a theoretical bias correction method for average treatment effect (ATE) estimation based on graph structure and propose an approach to generalize results to the general population.