---
title: "Spillover Detection for Donor Selection in Synthetic Control Models"
url: https://daily.dev/posts/spillover-detection-for-donor-selection-in-synthetic-control-models-zxrp2vmfc
source_url: https://research.atspotify.com/2025/11/spillover-detection-for-donor-selection-in-synthetic-control-models/
type: article
source: "Spotify Research"
published: 2025-11-18T17:30:43.951Z
updated: 2025-11-18T17:33:15.890Z
tags: ["machine-learning", "data-science", "spotify", "ab-testing"]
reading_time: 7
upvotes: 0
comments: 0
language: en
---

> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Spillover Detection for Donor Selection in Synthetic Control Models

**[Spotify Research](https://daily.dev/sources/spotify_research)** · 7 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

## Summary

Spotify Research introduces an improved synthetic control methodology for measuring product impact when A/B testing isn't feasible. The approach uses forecasting to automatically detect spillover effects and select valid donor controls, eliminating reliance on domain knowledge alone. A new theorem based on proximal causal inference enables data-driven donor selection by testing if pre-intervention forecasts match post-intervention reality. The method also debiases estimates by leveraging excluded donors' pre-intervention data, providing sensitivity analysis frameworks to handle selection errors and latent confounding.

## Full article

daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: <https://research.atspotify.com/2025/11/spillover-detection-for-donor-selection-in-synthetic-control-models/>

## Similar posts on daily.dev

- [Product Experimentation with Synthetic Control: Causal Inference for Global LLM Rollouts in Python](https://daily.dev/posts/product-experimentation-with-synthetic-control-causal-inference-for-global-llm-rollouts-in-python-ndk7jj8dt) · freeCodeCamp · 1 upvotes · 0 comments
- [Beyond A/B Testing: Using Surrogacy and Region-Splits to Measure Long-Term Effects in Marketplaces](https://daily.dev/posts/beyond-a-b-testing-using-surrogacy-and-region-splits-to-measure-long-term-effects-in-marketplaces-xjli28ikv) · Lyft Engineering · 0 upvotes · 0 comments
- [From Prediction to Intervention](https://daily.dev/posts/from-prediction-to-intervention-n2aqewbwf) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments

---

Tags: [#machine-learning](https://daily.dev/tags/machine-learning), [#data-science](https://daily.dev/tags/data-science), [#spotify](https://daily.dev/tags/spotify), [#ab-testing](https://daily.dev/tags/ab-testing)

[View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/spillover-detection-for-donor-selection-in-synthetic-control-models-zxrp2vmfc)