Toward a benchmark for CTR prediction in online advertising: datasets, evaluation protocols and perspectives

Fuente: arXiv
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Autores principales: Gao, Shan, Yang, Yanwu
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2025
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author Gao, Shan
Yang, Yanwu
author_facet Gao, Shan
Yang, Yanwu
contents This research designs a unified architecture of CTR prediction benchmark (Bench-CTR) platform that offers flexible interfaces with datasets and components of a wide range of CTR prediction models. Moreover, we construct a comprehensive system of evaluation protocols encompassing real-world and synthetic datasets, a taxonomy of metrics, standardized procedures and experimental guidelines for calibrating the performance of CTR prediction models. Furthermore, we implement the proposed benchmark platform and conduct a comparative study to evaluate a wide range of state-of-the-art models from traditional multivariate statistical to modern large language model (LLM)-based approaches on three public datasets and two synthetic datasets. Experimental results reveal that, (1) high-order models largely outperform low-order models, though such advantage varies in terms of metrics and on different datasets; (2) LLM-based models demonstrate a remarkable data efficiency, i.e., achieving the comparable performance to other models while using only 2% of the training data; (3) the performance of CTR prediction models has achieved significant improvements from 2015 to 2016, then reached a stage with slow progress, which is consistent across various datasets. This benchmark is expected to facilitate model development and evaluation and enhance practitioners' understanding of the underlying mechanisms of models in the area of CTR prediction. Code is available at https://github.com/NuriaNinja/Bench-CTR.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2512_01179
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Toward a benchmark for CTR prediction in online advertising: datasets, evaluation protocols and perspectives
Gao, Shan
Yang, Yanwu
Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
68Txx
I.2.6
This research designs a unified architecture of CTR prediction benchmark (Bench-CTR) platform that offers flexible interfaces with datasets and components of a wide range of CTR prediction models. Moreover, we construct a comprehensive system of evaluation protocols encompassing real-world and synthetic datasets, a taxonomy of metrics, standardized procedures and experimental guidelines for calibrating the performance of CTR prediction models. Furthermore, we implement the proposed benchmark platform and conduct a comparative study to evaluate a wide range of state-of-the-art models from traditional multivariate statistical to modern large language model (LLM)-based approaches on three public datasets and two synthetic datasets. Experimental results reveal that, (1) high-order models largely outperform low-order models, though such advantage varies in terms of metrics and on different datasets; (2) LLM-based models demonstrate a remarkable data efficiency, i.e., achieving the comparable performance to other models while using only 2% of the training data; (3) the performance of CTR prediction models has achieved significant improvements from 2015 to 2016, then reached a stage with slow progress, which is consistent across various datasets. This benchmark is expected to facilitate model development and evaluation and enhance practitioners' understanding of the underlying mechanisms of models in the area of CTR prediction. Code is available at https://github.com/NuriaNinja/Bench-CTR.
title Toward a benchmark for CTR prediction in online advertising: datasets, evaluation protocols and perspectives
topic Information Retrieval
Artificial Intelligence
Machine Learning
68Txx
I.2.6
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.01179