Recommendations are broadly used in marketplaces to match users with items relevant to their interests and needs. To understand user intent and tailor recommendations to their needs, we use deep learning to explore various heterogeneous data available in marketplaces. This paper focuses on the challenge of measuring re…
New estimator reduces bias in interference studies on content marketplaces.
problem Interference bias in experiments on content marketplaces like Douyin.
method Developed a Monte-Carlo estimator based on DQ techniques.
result Achieved bias second-order in treatment effect with low variance.
Recommendation algorithms are widely adopted in marketplaces to help users find the items they are looking for. The sparsity of the items by user matrix and the cold-start issue in marketplaces pose challenges for the off-the-shelf matrix factorization based recommender systems. To understand user intent and tailor rec…
MARS-Gym framework for marketplaces to train and evaluate recommender systems.
problem Challenges in designing, training, and evaluating recommender systems in marketplaces.
method Open-source framework for Reinforcement Learning agents in marketplaces.
result Empowers researchers and engineers to quickly build and evaluate agents for recommendations.
A scalable system detects price anomalies in online marketplaces to improve customer experience.
problem Inaccurate prices on online marketplaces lead to poor customer experience and revenue loss.
method MoatPlus uses unsupervised statistical features and an ensemble of models to generate upper price bounds.
result Our approach improves precise anchor coverage by up to 46.6% in high-vulnerability item subsets.
Proposes a framework for fairness in two-sided marketplaces.
problem Achieving fairness in two-sided marketplaces.
method Developed an end-to-end framework for fairness constraints from both sides of the marketplace, including dynamic aspects.
result Efficacy of the proposed framework demonstrated through simulations.
Optimizes bidding strategies for LinkedIn ads across multiple platforms.
problem Optimizing automated bidding agents for dynamic online marketplaces.
method Developed a general optimization framework for buyer's interest, agnostic to auction mechanisms.
result Automatically guarantees the optimality of budget allocation across ad units and platforms.
Uber optimizes marketplace levers using machine learning to improve resource allocation efficiency.
problem Optimizing budget allocation for drivers and riders to maximize business value.
method End-to-end machine learning and optimization procedure using feature store, model training, and ADMM.
result Substantially improved Uber's resource allocation efficiency through high-dimensional optimization.
This paper presents approaches to determine a network based pricing for 3D printing services in the context of a two-sided manufacturing-as-a-service marketplace. The intent is to provide cost analytics to enable service bureaus to better compete in the market by moving away from setting ad-hoc and subjective prices. A…
Study fair team formation in online labor marketplaces.
problem Design fair algorithms for team formation in online labor marketplaces.
method Define and analyze the Fair Team Formation problem, provide inapproximability results, and develop four algorithms.
result Developed four algorithms for fair team formation in online labor marketplaces.
GCF estimates heterogeneous treatment effects for continuous treatments in online marketplaces.
problem Estimating heterogeneous treatment effects for continuous treatments in online marketplaces.
method Kernel-based doubly robust estimator and distance-based splitting criterion.
result GCF estimates heterogeneous treatment effects for continuous treatments effectively.
Framework for optimizing search engine rankings using observational data.
problem Optimizing ranking policies for search engines using limited observational data.
method Formulated expected reward optimization problem, estimated context value distribution, trained ranking policy via Bayesian inference.
result Demonstrated trade-offs in ranking policies trained on empirical reward estimates.
Study enhances cryptocurrency sentiment analysis using TikTok and Twitter data.
problem Lack of comprehensive sentiment analysis in cryptocurrency markets.
method Multimodal analysis of TikTok and Twitter data using large language models.
result TikTok's video sentiment influences speculative assets and short-term trends.
NFTs revolutionize art sales by providing proof of ownership.
problem Lack of provenance and authenticity in digital art.
method Analysis of major art NFT marketplaces.
result NFTs reduce the need for intermediaries in the art trade.
A new mechanism optimizes data marketplace pricing efficiently.
problem Designing fair and efficient pricing mechanisms for data marketplaces.
method Two-stage approach: auctions to estimate value distributions, then optimal posted prices.
result MAPP achieves optimal revenue with minimal price discrimination.
In this paper, we propose an offline counterfactual policy estimation framework called Genie to optimize Sponsored Search Marketplace. Genie employs an open box simulation engine with click calibration model to compute the KPI impact of any modification to the system. From the experimental results on Bing traffic, we s…
Study fairness in intervention to maximize outcomes.
problem Fairness in intervention on a given node.
method Counterfactual estimation with partial causal model knowledge.
result Theoretical guarantees on error probability and effectiveness of algorithm.
Method prevents model divergence in rapidly changing ad markets.
problem Model divergence due to rapid ad turnover and discontinuity.
method Dual ascent optimization with latent vector constraints.
result Significant reduction in diverging instances and improved user experience/revenue.
Correctly pricing products or services in an online marketplace presents a challenging problem and one of the critical factors for the success of the business. When users are looking to buy an item they typically search for it. Query relevance models are used at this stage to retrieve and rank the items on the search p…
Suppliers (including companies and individual prosumers) may wish to protect their private information when selling items they have in stock. A market is envisaged where private information can be protected through the use of differential privacy and option contracts, while privacy-aware suppliers deliver their stock a…
A new dataset tracks user interactions and click responses in online marketplaces.
problem Lack of exposure data in recommender systems datasets.
method Proposes a novel dataset including slates and click responses, allowing more accurate likelihood models.
result Models using exposure data show more natural likelihood, reducing bias towards previously exposed items.
Optimizes package types for e-commerce to reduce damage and costs.
problem Sub-optimal package types lead to damaged shipments and high costs.
method Multi-stage approach that balances shipment and damage costs using a scalable algorithm.
result Significant cost savings of tens of millions of dollars achieved.
Two-sided marketplaces such as eBay, Etsy and Taobao have two distinct groups of customers: buyers who use the platform to seek the most relevant and interesting item to purchase and sellers who view the same platform as a tool to reach out to their audience and grow their business. Additionally, platforms have their o…
Study shows online learning algorithms incentivize low-quality content, proposing new algorithms to improve quality.
problem Online learning algorithms in content recommender systems incentivize producers to create low-quality content.
method Analyzed the game between producers and content quality, designed new learning algorithms to incentivize high effort and quality.
result New algorithms incentivize producers to invest high effort and achieve high user welfare, improving content quality.
Sample-Rank simplifies MO recommendations by sampling and ranking, improving revenue with stable conversion rates.
problem Multi-objective recommendations in online food ordering systems.
method Multi-goal sampling followed by ranking, reducing MO problem to LTR model.
result Significant lift in revenue (2.64%) with stable conversion rates, no drop in last-mile traversal.
Proposes a model to optimize feedback for content creators on social media.
problem Nurturing content creation on social media platforms.
method Modeling feedback distribution to incentivize creators and optimize newsfeed experience.
result Optimized newsfeed for content creators without compromising user experience.
Proposes a VAE variant for ordinal content factors.
problem Isolating ordinal-valued content factors in deep latent variable models.
method Introduces a partially ordered set (poset) structure and a conditional Gaussian spacing prior model.
result Significant improvements in content-style separation over previous non-ordinal approaches.
Sensory data are often comprised of independent content and transformation factors. For example, face images may have shapes as content and poses as transformation. To infer separately these factors from given data, various ``disentangling'' models have been proposed. However, many of these are supervised or semi-super…
Paper tackles underranking in group-fair ranking systems, proving a trade-off and presenting an algorithm.
problem Underranking in group-fair ranking systems can worsen social and economic inequalities.
method Formulated underranking as a new problem, proved a lower bound, and presented a fair ranking algorithm.
result Algorithm achieves best of underranking and group fairness, confirming theoretical trade-off.
Alternative app data improves credit scoring for underserved borrowers.
problem Improving credit scoring for low-wealth and young individuals.
method Use of alternative data from app-based marketplaces, validated with TreeSHAP method.
result Alternative data sources predict financial behavior better than traditional bureau data.
In the industry of video content providers such as VOD and IPTV, predicting the popularity of video contents in advance is critical not only from a marketing perspective but also from a network optimization perspective. By predicting whether the content will be successful or not in advance, the content file, which is l…
Many businesses are using recommender systems for marketing outreach. Recommendation algorithms can be either based on content or driven by collaborative filtering. We study different ways to incorporate content information directly into the matrix factorization approach of collaborative filtering. These content-booste…
Efficiently projects points onto polytopes, especially useful in web-scale applications.
problem Efficiently projecting points onto polytopes in large-scale applications.
method Developed a vertex-oriented incremental algorithm for polytope projection, tailored for simplex and unit-box cut polytopes.
result Majority of projections lie on vertices of polytopes, leading to significant performance improvements.
Spotify improves content mix using contextual bandits.
problem Skewed historical data and varying user preferences across contexts.
method Contextual bandits to dynamically learn optimal content type distribution.
result Improved precision and user engagement with under-represented content types.
A new model considers fatigue in online content recommendation systems.
problem Fatigue in users due to overexposure and boredom from similar recommendations.
method Proposed a fatigue-aware Dependent Click Model (DCM) and two learning algorithms.
result Developed algorithms with regret bounds for learning content relevance and fatigue effects.
New PCGML approach generates novel game content across multiple platformer domains.
problem Generating novel game content in new domains.
method Using a new affordance and path vocabulary, variational autoencoders trained on data from six platformer games produce new content with varying proportions of different domains.
result Captures latent level space spanning multiple domains and generates new content with varying proportions of different domains.
We consider visual domains in which a class label specifies the content of an image, and class-irrelevant properties that differentiate instances constitute the style. We present a domain-independent method that permits the open-ended recombination of style of one image with the content of another. Open ended simply me…
New study shows personalized content recommendations can lead to polarization of user preferences.
problem Personalized content recommendations can alter user preferences, leading to polarization.
method Used a model of preference dynamics to explore how personalized content affects user preferences.
result Standard reward maximization algorithms achieve only constant regret in personalized recommendation environments.
Text style transfer aims to modify the style of a sentence while keeping its content unchanged. Recent style transfer systems often fail to faithfully preserve the content after changing the style. This paper proposes a structured content preserving model that leverages linguistic information in the structured fine-gra…
Study on heat content for submanifolds in sub-Riemannian geometry.
problem Understanding heat content for submanifolds in sub-Riemannian geometry.
method Existence of smooth tubular neighborhood, definition of relative heat content, approximation via smooth neighborhoods, asymptotic expansion analysis.
result Approximation of relative heat content fails to recover the exact expansion.
With rapid development of the Internet, web contents become huge. Most of the websites are publicly available, and anyone can access the contents from anywhere such as workplace, home and even schools. Nevertheless, not all the web contents are appropriate for all users, especially children. An example of these content…
Improved model accuracy can reduce overall user accuracy in competitive markets.
problem The impact of model competition on overall user accuracy.
method Defined a model of competition for classification tasks and used data representations to study the effect of scale.
result Improving data representation quality can decrease overall predictive accuracy across users (social welfare) in a competitive market.
In crowd labeling, a large amount of unlabeled data instances are outsourced to a crowd of workers. Workers will be paid for each label they provide, but the labeling requester usually has only a limited amount of the budget. Since data instances have different levels of labeling difficulty and workers have different r…
Enhances content moderation with culturally-aware models.
problem Global content moderation policies miss local cultural nuances.
method Fine-tuning encoder-decoder models on media-diet data.
result Improved accuracy in local violation detection and cultural alignment.
This work improves disentanglement by preventing style variables from encoding content-related features.
problem Disentanglement of content and style in data representations using Variational Autoencoders.
method Adversarial training with mutual information minimization to prevent content information leakage in style representations.
result The method efficiently separates content and style related attributes and generalizes to unseen data.
Much of the data being created on the web contains interactions between users and items. Stochastic blockmodels, and other methods for community detection and clustering of bipartite graphs, can infer latent user communities and latent item clusters from this interaction data. These methods, however, typically ignore t…
Transforms web content for better visibility in AI-driven search engines.
problem Disruption of traditional SEO by generative AI search engines.
method Fine-tunes a BART-base transformer on synthetically generated training data.
result Significant improvements in ROUGE-L and BLEU scores, and substantial visibility gains in generative search responses.
A new recommender system uses slates and Thompson Sampling to improve diversity and click rates.
problem Recommending relevant content to users in a dynamic environment.
method Variational Bayesian Recurrent Neural Net, Thompson Sampling, hierarchical prior, in-slate Thompson Sampling.
result Improved click rates and diversity in recommended slates.