Do Not Wait: Learning Re-Ranking Model Without User Feedback At Serving Time in E-Commerce

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Wang, Yuan, Li, Zhiyu, Zhang, Changshuo, Chen, Sirui, Zhang, Xiao, Xu, Jun, Lin, Quan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Wang, Yuan
Li, Zhiyu
Zhang, Changshuo
Chen, Sirui
Zhang, Xiao
Xu, Jun
Lin, Quan
author_facet Wang, Yuan
Li, Zhiyu
Zhang, Changshuo
Chen, Sirui
Zhang, Xiao
Xu, Jun
Lin, Quan
contents Recommender systems have been widely used in e-commerce, and re-ranking models are playing an increasingly significant role in the domain, which leverages the inter-item influence and determines the final recommendation lists. Online learning methods keep updating a deployed model with the latest available samples to capture the shifting of the underlying data distribution in e-commerce. However, they depend on the availability of real user feedback, which may be delayed by hours or even days, such as item purchases, leading to a lag in model enhancement. In this paper, we propose a novel extension of online learning methods for re-ranking modeling, which we term LAST, an acronym for Learning At Serving Time. It circumvents the requirement of user feedback by using a surrogate model to provide the instructional signal needed to steer model improvement. Upon receiving an online request, LAST finds and applies a model modification on the fly before generating a recommendation result for the request. The modification is request-specific and transient. It means the modification is tailored to and only to the current request to capture the specific context of the request. After a request, the modification is discarded, which helps to prevent error propagation and stabilizes the online learning procedure since the predictions of the surrogate model may be inaccurate. Most importantly, as a complement to feedback-based online learning methods, LAST can be seamlessly integrated into existing online learning systems to create a more adaptive and responsive recommendation experience. Comprehensive experiments, both offline and online, affirm that LAST outperforms state-of-the-art re-ranking models.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2406_14004
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Do Not Wait: Learning Re-Ranking Model Without User Feedback At Serving Time in E-Commerce
Wang, Yuan
Li, Zhiyu
Zhang, Changshuo
Chen, Sirui
Zhang, Xiao
Xu, Jun
Lin, Quan
Information Retrieval
Machine Learning
Recommender systems have been widely used in e-commerce, and re-ranking models are playing an increasingly significant role in the domain, which leverages the inter-item influence and determines the final recommendation lists. Online learning methods keep updating a deployed model with the latest available samples to capture the shifting of the underlying data distribution in e-commerce. However, they depend on the availability of real user feedback, which may be delayed by hours or even days, such as item purchases, leading to a lag in model enhancement. In this paper, we propose a novel extension of online learning methods for re-ranking modeling, which we term LAST, an acronym for Learning At Serving Time. It circumvents the requirement of user feedback by using a surrogate model to provide the instructional signal needed to steer model improvement. Upon receiving an online request, LAST finds and applies a model modification on the fly before generating a recommendation result for the request. The modification is request-specific and transient. It means the modification is tailored to and only to the current request to capture the specific context of the request. After a request, the modification is discarded, which helps to prevent error propagation and stabilizes the online learning procedure since the predictions of the surrogate model may be inaccurate. Most importantly, as a complement to feedback-based online learning methods, LAST can be seamlessly integrated into existing online learning systems to create a more adaptive and responsive recommendation experience. Comprehensive experiments, both offline and online, affirm that LAST outperforms state-of-the-art re-ranking models.
title Do Not Wait: Learning Re-Ranking Model Without User Feedback At Serving Time in E-Commerce
topic Information Retrieval
Machine Learning
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2406.14004