Papers › Learning Piece-wise Linear Models from Large Scale Data for Ad Click Prediction

Learning Piece-wise Linear Models from Large Scale Data for Ad Click Prediction

18 Apr 2017arXiv:1704.05194archive 2025-07-28

Kun Gai, Xiaoqiang Zhu, Han Li, Kai Liu, Zhe Wang

CTR prediction in real-world business is a difficult machine learning problem with large scale nonlinear sparse data. In this paper, we introduce an industrial strength solution with model named Large Scale Piece-wise Linear Model (LS-PLM). We formulate the learning problem with L₁ and L_(2,1) regularizers, leading to a non-convex and non-smooth optimization problem. Then, we propose a novel algorithm to solve it efficiently, based on directional derivatives and quasi-Newton method. In addition, we design a distributed system which can run on hundreds of machines parallel and provides us with the industrial scalability. LS-PLM model can capture nonlinear patterns from massive sparse data, saving us from heavy feature engineering jobs. Since 2012, LS-PLM has become the main CTR prediction model in Alibaba's online display advertising system, serving hundreds of millions users every day.

PaperPDFCode

In Syntology Open this paper in Syntology's Atlas, the map of the papers in Syntology's graph and their citations.

Code

UlionTse/mlgb mentioned on GitHubpytorch report
shenweichen/DeepCTR mentioned on GitHubtf report
shenweichen/DeepCTR-Torch mentioned on GitHubpytorchApache-2.0 report

Repository list and official/mentioned flags are the archive's, frozen 2025-07-28. Reachability, where shown, is from one Syntology probe window (2026-09-16 to 2026-09-18); repositories not probed show nothing. GitHub stars are not tracked.

Code Syntology ran Syntology

Not run by Syntology. Nothing on this page verifies that the listed code works.

Tasks

Click-Through Rate PredictionFeature Engineering

Results from the paper archive 2025-07-28

No leaderboard rows for this paper in the archive.

Report a problem or propose a change · a person checks every report against the paper or source before anything changes; decisions are listed on /corrections