Helen: Optimizing CTR Prediction Models with Frequency-wise Hessian Eigenvalue Regularization

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Zhu, Zirui, Liu, Yong, Zheng, Zangwei, Guo, Huifeng, You, Yang
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Zhu, Zirui
Liu, Yong
Zheng, Zangwei
Guo, Huifeng
You, Yang
author_facet Zhu, Zirui
Liu, Yong
Zheng, Zangwei
Guo, Huifeng
You, Yang
contents Click-Through Rate (CTR) prediction holds paramount significance in online advertising and recommendation scenarios. Despite the proliferation of recent CTR prediction models, the improvements in performance have remained limited, as evidenced by open-source benchmark assessments. Current researchers tend to focus on developing new models for various datasets and settings, often neglecting a crucial question: What is the key challenge that truly makes CTR prediction so demanding? In this paper, we approach the problem of CTR prediction from an optimization perspective. We explore the typical data characteristics and optimization statistics of CTR prediction, revealing a strong positive correlation between the top hessian eigenvalue and feature frequency. This correlation implies that frequently occurring features tend to converge towards sharp local minima, ultimately leading to suboptimal performance. Motivated by the recent advancements in sharpness-aware minimization (SAM), which considers the geometric aspects of the loss landscape during optimization, we present a dedicated optimizer crafted for CTR prediction, named Helen. Helen incorporates frequency-wise Hessian eigenvalue regularization, achieved through adaptive perturbations based on normalized feature frequencies. Empirical results under the open-source benchmark framework underscore Helen's effectiveness. It successfully constrains the top eigenvalue of the Hessian matrix and demonstrates a clear advantage over widely used optimization algorithms when applied to seven popular models across three public benchmark datasets on BARS. Our code locates at github.com/NUS-HPC-AI-Lab/Helen.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2403_00798
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Helen: Optimizing CTR Prediction Models with Frequency-wise Hessian Eigenvalue Regularization
Zhu, Zirui
Liu, Yong
Zheng, Zangwei
Guo, Huifeng
You, Yang
Information Retrieval
Machine Learning
Click-Through Rate (CTR) prediction holds paramount significance in online advertising and recommendation scenarios. Despite the proliferation of recent CTR prediction models, the improvements in performance have remained limited, as evidenced by open-source benchmark assessments. Current researchers tend to focus on developing new models for various datasets and settings, often neglecting a crucial question: What is the key challenge that truly makes CTR prediction so demanding? In this paper, we approach the problem of CTR prediction from an optimization perspective. We explore the typical data characteristics and optimization statistics of CTR prediction, revealing a strong positive correlation between the top hessian eigenvalue and feature frequency. This correlation implies that frequently occurring features tend to converge towards sharp local minima, ultimately leading to suboptimal performance. Motivated by the recent advancements in sharpness-aware minimization (SAM), which considers the geometric aspects of the loss landscape during optimization, we present a dedicated optimizer crafted for CTR prediction, named Helen. Helen incorporates frequency-wise Hessian eigenvalue regularization, achieved through adaptive perturbations based on normalized feature frequencies. Empirical results under the open-source benchmark framework underscore Helen's effectiveness. It successfully constrains the top eigenvalue of the Hessian matrix and demonstrates a clear advantage over widely used optimization algorithms when applied to seven popular models across three public benchmark datasets on BARS. Our code locates at github.com/NUS-HPC-AI-Lab/Helen.
title Helen: Optimizing CTR Prediction Models with Frequency-wise Hessian Eigenvalue Regularization
topic Information Retrieval
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.00798