TransAct: Transformer-based Realtime User Action Model for Recommendation at Pinterest

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Xia, Xue, Eksombatchai, Pong, Pancha, Nikil, Badani, Dhruvil Deven, Wang, Po-Wei, Gu, Neng, Joshi, Saurabh Vishwas, Farahpour, Nazanin, Zhang, Zhiyuan, Zhai, Andrew
Format: Preprint
Published: 2023
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author Xia, Xue
Eksombatchai, Pong
Pancha, Nikil
Badani, Dhruvil Deven
Wang, Po-Wei
Gu, Neng
Joshi, Saurabh Vishwas
Farahpour, Nazanin
Zhang, Zhiyuan
Zhai, Andrew
author_facet Xia, Xue
Eksombatchai, Pong
Pancha, Nikil
Badani, Dhruvil Deven
Wang, Po-Wei
Gu, Neng
Joshi, Saurabh Vishwas
Farahpour, Nazanin
Zhang, Zhiyuan
Zhai, Andrew
contents Sequential models that encode user activity for next action prediction have become a popular design choice for building web-scale personalized recommendation systems. Traditional methods of sequential recommendation either utilize end-to-end learning on realtime user actions, or learn user representations separately in an offline batch-generated manner. This paper (1) presents Pinterest's ranking architecture for Homefeed, our personalized recommendation product and the largest engagement surface; (2) proposes TransAct, a sequential model that extracts users' short-term preferences from their realtime activities; (3) describes our hybrid approach to ranking, which combines end-to-end sequential modeling via TransAct with batch-generated user embeddings. The hybrid approach allows us to combine the advantages of responsiveness from learning directly on realtime user activity with the cost-effectiveness of batch user representations learned over a longer time period. We describe the results of ablation studies, the challenges we faced during productionization, and the outcome of an online A/B experiment, which validates the effectiveness of our hybrid ranking model. We further demonstrate the effectiveness of TransAct on other surfaces such as contextual recommendations and search. Our model has been deployed to production in Homefeed, Related Pins, Notifications, and Search at Pinterest.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2306_00248
institution arXiv
publishDate 2023
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle TransAct: Transformer-based Realtime User Action Model for Recommendation at Pinterest
Xia, Xue
Eksombatchai, Pong
Pancha, Nikil
Badani, Dhruvil Deven
Wang, Po-Wei
Gu, Neng
Joshi, Saurabh Vishwas
Farahpour, Nazanin
Zhang, Zhiyuan
Zhai, Andrew
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Sequential models that encode user activity for next action prediction have become a popular design choice for building web-scale personalized recommendation systems. Traditional methods of sequential recommendation either utilize end-to-end learning on realtime user actions, or learn user representations separately in an offline batch-generated manner. This paper (1) presents Pinterest's ranking architecture for Homefeed, our personalized recommendation product and the largest engagement surface; (2) proposes TransAct, a sequential model that extracts users' short-term preferences from their realtime activities; (3) describes our hybrid approach to ranking, which combines end-to-end sequential modeling via TransAct with batch-generated user embeddings. The hybrid approach allows us to combine the advantages of responsiveness from learning directly on realtime user activity with the cost-effectiveness of batch user representations learned over a longer time period. We describe the results of ablation studies, the challenges we faced during productionization, and the outcome of an online A/B experiment, which validates the effectiveness of our hybrid ranking model. We further demonstrate the effectiveness of TransAct on other surfaces such as contextual recommendations and search. Our model has been deployed to production in Homefeed, Related Pins, Notifications, and Search at Pinterest.
title TransAct: Transformer-based Realtime User Action Model for Recommendation at Pinterest
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.00248