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A novel prior-based real-time click through rate prediction model

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Abstract

The application of traditional machine learning algorithms on click data has met great challenges working with severe sparse and transient ID features, which tend to bloat data size and prolong training time considerably. On the other hand, due to the data size requirement, training and publishing overhead, the bottleneck of minute-level incremental model updates has emerged. We propose a novel real-time click through rate (CTR) prediction model based on empirical CTRs with a set of pre-learned priors, upon which a Minimum Variance Unbiased Estimator is constructed as the CTR prediction. The dimensions of the empirical CTRs are in the sparsest and finest ID levels, which can be strong indicators but are generally unsuited as machine learning features. Experiments on real-life click data show that our prior-based real-time estimator, combined with traditional machine learning model, gains significant improvement in both prediction accuracy and ranking capability, especially with latest data beyond the time-effectiveness of the machine learning model.

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Notes

  1. Depending on the application, the ad sponsoring engines usually wait from several minutes to an hour for users’ click.

  2. As for Sponsor Search, search session IDs and queries can be considered counterparts of the former two.

  3. A category of features; most of the paper is focused on three dimensions: cookie, URL, and ad-id.

  4. We limit our attention to Google-like rank-by-revenue auctions, i.e., the ads are displayed in the decreasing order of CTR * bid.

  5. Most commercial implementations of Machine Learning models (e.g. Google and Baidu’s Logistic Regression, Microsoft’s Bayesian Probit Regression) binarize all features. For example, PLSA score between query and ad is a common feature (class). After binarization, initial PLSA values of 0.1 and 0.099 might become two totally unrelated features.

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Acknowledgements

This work is sponsored by Shanghai University of International Business and Economics (SUIBE) under both Cooperation Projects funded by the Central Finance and Project Z085YYJJ13063. We are especially grateful to collaborators at mediav.com and anonymous reviewers.

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Correspondence to Yan Fang.

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Fang, Y., Liu, J. A novel prior-based real-time click through rate prediction model. Int. J. Mach. Learn. & Cyber. 5, 887–895 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13042-014-0231-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13042-014-0231-7

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