Conditional Quantile Estimation for Uncertain Watch Time in Short-Video Recommendation

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Lin, Chengzhi, Liu, Shuchang, Wang, Chuyuan, Liu, Yongqi
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
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author Lin, Chengzhi
Liu, Shuchang
Wang, Chuyuan
Liu, Yongqi
author_facet Lin, Chengzhi
Liu, Shuchang
Wang, Chuyuan
Liu, Yongqi
contents Accurately predicting watch time is crucial for optimizing recommendations and user experience in short video platforms. However, existing methods that estimate a single average watch time often fail to capture the inherent uncertainty in user engagement patterns. In this paper, we propose Conditional Quantile Estimation (CQE) to model the entire conditional distribution of watch time. Using quantile regression, CQE characterizes the complex watch-time distribution for each user-video pair, providing a flexible and comprehensive approach to understanding user behavior. We further design multiple strategies to combine the quantile estimates, adapting to different recommendation scenarios and user preferences. Extensive offline experiments and online A/B tests demonstrate the superiority of CQE in watch-time prediction and user engagement modeling. Specifically, deploying CQE online on a large-scale platform with hundreds of millions of daily active users has led to substantial gains in key evaluation metrics, including active days, engagement time, and video views. These results highlight the practical impact of our proposed approach in enhancing the user experience and overall performance of the short video recommendation system. The code will be released https://github.com/justopit/CQE.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2407_12223
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Conditional Quantile Estimation for Uncertain Watch Time in Short-Video Recommendation
Lin, Chengzhi
Liu, Shuchang
Wang, Chuyuan
Liu, Yongqi
Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
Accurately predicting watch time is crucial for optimizing recommendations and user experience in short video platforms. However, existing methods that estimate a single average watch time often fail to capture the inherent uncertainty in user engagement patterns. In this paper, we propose Conditional Quantile Estimation (CQE) to model the entire conditional distribution of watch time. Using quantile regression, CQE characterizes the complex watch-time distribution for each user-video pair, providing a flexible and comprehensive approach to understanding user behavior. We further design multiple strategies to combine the quantile estimates, adapting to different recommendation scenarios and user preferences. Extensive offline experiments and online A/B tests demonstrate the superiority of CQE in watch-time prediction and user engagement modeling. Specifically, deploying CQE online on a large-scale platform with hundreds of millions of daily active users has led to substantial gains in key evaluation metrics, including active days, engagement time, and video views. These results highlight the practical impact of our proposed approach in enhancing the user experience and overall performance of the short video recommendation system. The code will be released https://github.com/justopit/CQE.
title Conditional Quantile Estimation for Uncertain Watch Time in Short-Video Recommendation
topic Machine Learning
Artificial Intelligence
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2407.12223