Empirical results show that our approach can achieve substantial improvement over the state-of-the-art baselines.

Assuming we can estimatep(a|x) accurately, we have followingresults: Lemma 3.1. So the value of yx is determined by the linear equation systemMxyx = ax. Each bin is represented with a 32-dimensional embedding. We found that increasing the number of bins or embedding size could not improve performance significantly. The CVR prediction modelpθ(x) is a feature network followed by a linear classification layer. Specifically,if δj <δj+1,1 j

First,theirsemantic feature extractions are outdated while state-of-the-art large-scale pre-trained language models like BERT cannot be utilized due to the lack of original text.

Sequential recommendation systems predict the next interaction item based on users' past interactions, aligning recommendations with individual preferences. Leveraging the strengths of Large Language Models (LLMs) in knowledge comprehension and reasoning, recent approaches are eager to apply LLMs to sequential recommendation. A common paradigm is converting user behavior sequences into instruction data, and fine-tuning the LLM with parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) methods like Low-Rank Adaption (LoRA). However, the uniform application of LoRA across diverse user behaviors is insufficient to capture individual variability, resulting in negative transfer between disparate sequences.To address these challenges, we propose Instance-wise LoRA (iLoRA). We innovatively treat the sequential recommendation task as a form of multi-task learning, integrating LoRA with the Mixture of Experts (MoE) framework. This approach encourages different experts to capture various aspects of user behavior. Additionally, we introduce a sequence representation guided gate function that generates customized expert participation weights for each user sequence, which allows dynamic parameter adjustment for instance-wise recommendations.

User behavior data in recommender systems are driven by the complex interactions of many latent factors behind the users' decision making processes. The factors are highly entangled, and may range from high-level ones that govern user intentions, to low-level ones that characterize a user's preference when executing an intention. Learning representations that uncover and disentangle these latent factors can bring enhanced robustness, interpretability, and controllability. However, learning such disentangled representations from user behavior is challenging, and remains largely neglected by the existing literature. In this paper, we present the MACRo-mIcro Disentangled Variational Auto-Encoder (MacridVAE) for learning disentangled representations from user behavior. Our approach achieves macro disentanglement by inferring the high-level concepts associated with user intentions (e.g., to buy a shirt or a cellphone), while capturing the preference of a user regarding the different concepts separately. A micro-disentanglement regularizer, stemming from an information-theoretic interpretation of VAEs, then forces each dimension of the representations to independently reflect an isolated low-level factor (e.g., the size or the color of a shirt). Empirical results show that our approach can achieve substantial improvement over the state-of-the-art baselines. We further demonstrate that the learned representations are interpretable and controllable, which can potentially lead to a new paradigm for recommendation where users are given fine-grained control over targeted aspects of the recommendation lists.

Nowadays, recommendation systems have become crucial to online platforms, shaping user exposure by accurate preference modeling. However, such an exposure strategy can also reinforce users' existing preferences, leading to a notorious phenomenon named filter bubbles. Given its negative effects, such as group polarization, increasing attention has been paid to exploring reasonable measures to filter bubbles. However, most existing evaluation metrics simply measure the diversity of user exposure, failing to distinguish between algorithmic preference modeling and actual information confinement. In view of this, we introduce Bubble Escape Potential (BEP), a behavior-aware measure that quantifies how easily users can escape from filter bubbles. Specifically, BEP leverages a contrastive simulation framework that assigns different behavioral tendencies (e.g., positive vs. negative) to synthetic users and compares the induced exposure patterns. This design enables decoupling the effect of filter bubbles and preference modeling, allowing for more precise diagnosis of bubble severity. We conduct extensive experiments across multiple recommendation models to examine the relationship between predictive accuracy and bubble escape potential across different groups. To the best of our knowledge, our empirical results are the first to quantitatively validate the dilemma between preference modeling and filter bubbles. What's more, we observe a counter-intuitive phenomenon that mild random recommendations are ineffective in alleviating filter bubbles, which can offer a principled foundation for further work in this direction.

Click-through rates prediction is critical in modern advertising systems, where ranking relevance and user engagement directly impact platform efficiency and business value. In this project, we explore how to model CTR more effectively using a large-scale Taobao dataset released by Alibaba. We start with supervised learning models, including logistic regression and Light-GBM, that are trained on static features such as user demographics, ad attributes, and contextual metadata. These models provide fast, interpretable benchmarks, but have limited capabilities to capture patterns of behavior that drive clicks. To better model user intent, we combined behavioral data from hundreds of millions of interactions over a 22-day period. By extracting and encoding user action sequences, we construct representations of user interests over time. We use deep learning models to fuse behavioral embeddings with static features. Among them, multilayer perceptrons (MLPs) have achieved significant performance improvements. To capture temporal dynamics, we designed a Transformer-based architecture that uses a self-attention mechanism to learn contextual dependencies across behavioral sequences, modeling not only what the user interacts with, but also the timing and frequency of interactions. Transformer improves AUC by 2.81 % over the baseline (LR model), with the largest gains observed for users whose interests are diverse or change over time. In addition to modeling, we propose an A/B testing strategy for real-world evaluation. We also think about the broader implications: personalized ad targeting technology can be applied to public health scenarios to achieve precise delivery of health information or behavior guidance. Our research provides a roadmap for advancing click-through rate predictions and extending their value beyond e-commerce.

Large language models (LLMs) show promise for personalized financial recommendations but are hampered by context limits, hallucinations, and a lack of behavioral grounding. Our prior work, FLARKO, embedded structured knowledge graphs (KGs) in LLM prompts to align advice with user behavior and market data. This paper introduces RAG-FLARKO, a retrieval-augmented extension to FLARKO, that overcomes scalability and relevance challenges using multi-stage and parallel KG retrieval processes. Our method first retrieves behaviorally relevant entities from a user's transaction KG and then uses this context to filter temporally consistent signals from a market KG, constructing a compact, grounded subgraph for the LLM. This pipeline reduces context overhead and sharpens the model's focus on relevant information. Empirical evaluation on a real-world financial transaction dataset demonstrates that RAG-FLARKO significantly enhances recommendation quality. Notably, our framework enables smaller, more efficient models to achieve high performance in both profitability and behavioral alignment, presenting a viable path for deploying grounded financial AI in resource-constrained environments.