Generative Bid Shading in Real-Time Bidding Advertising
Abstract
Bid shading plays a crucial role in Real-Time Bidding (RTB) by adaptively adjusting the bid to avoid advertisers overspending. Existing mainstream two-stage methods, which first model bid landscapes and then optimize surplus using operations research techniques, are constrained by unimodal assumptions that fail to adapt for non-convex surplus curves and are vulnerable to cascading errors in sequential workflows. Additionally, existing discretization models of continuous values ignore the dependence between discrete intervals, reducing the model's error correction ability, while sample selection bias in bidding scenarios presents further challenges for prediction. To address these issues, this paper introduces Generative Bid Shading (GBS), which comprises two primary components: 1) an end-to-end generative model that utilizes an autoregressive approach to generate shading ratios by stepwise residuals, capturing complex value dependencies without relying on predefined priors; and 2) a reward preference alignment system, which incorporates a channel-aware hierarchical dynamic network (CHNet) as the reward model to extract fine-grained features, along with modules for surplus optimization and exploration utility reward alignment, ultimately optimizing both short-term and long-term surplus using group relative policy optimization (GRPO). Extensive experiments on both offline and online A/B tests validate GBS's effectiveness. Moreover, GBS has been deployed on the Meituan DSP platform, serving billions of bid requests daily.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yusen Huo | 100 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Bid2X: Revealing Dynamics of Bidding Environment in Online Advertising from A Foundation Model Lens (2025) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 An Adaptable Budget Planner for Enhancing Budget-Constrained Auto-Bidding in Online Advertising (2025) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 2 | Zhilin Zhang 0003 | 97 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Bid2X: Revealing Dynamics of Bidding Environment in Online Advertising from A Foundation Model Lens (2025) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 3 | Chuan Yu 0002 | 95 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Bid2X: Revealing Dynamics of Bidding Environment in Online Advertising from A Foundation Model Lens (2025) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Fernando Diaz 0001 | 21 |
Area-chair candidates (2)
| Yanan Niu | 21 | 15 papers | |
| Fernando Diaz 0001 assigned | 21 | 12 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yusen Huo assigned | 100 | 3 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Bid2X: Revealing Dynamics of Bidding Environment in Online Advertising from A Foundation Model Lens (2025) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 2 | Zhilin Zhang 0003 assigned | 97 | 3 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 3 | Chuan Yu 0002 assigned | 95 | 3 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 4 | Tianyu Wang 0028 | 76 | 3 | 100 Generative Auto-bidding via Conditional Diffusion Modeling (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 GAM: A Generative Auto-Marketing Framework in Online E-commerce Platforms (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
|
| 5 | Ching Law | 44 | 3 | 100 Auto-bidding under Return-on-Spend Constraints with Uncertainty Quantification (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 63 AutoPP: Towards Automated Product Poster Generation and Optimization (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 6 | Xialong Liu | 44 | 3 | 100 ZIPBid: Hierarchical Zero-shot Incremental Spend Planning for Auto-bidding (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 R&F-Inventory: A Large-Scale Dataset for Monotonic Inventory Estimation in Reach and Frequency Advertising (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 7 | Xuanhua Yang | 36 | 3 | 63 Gradient Coordination for Quantifying and Maximizing Knowledge Transference in Multi-Task Learning (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 60 AdaSparse: Learning Adaptively Sparse Structures for Multi-Domain Click-Through Rate Prediction (2022) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 8 | Xin Zhang 0091 | 33 | 3 | 100 Temporal Uplift Modeling for Online Marketing (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 19 Graph-aware collaborative reasoning for click-through rate prediction (2023) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 9 | Shijie Wang 0002 | 28 | 3 | 100 Tree-of-AdEditor: Heuristic Tree Reasoning for Automated Video Advertisement Editing with Large Language Model (2025) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 27 Continuous-time Discrete-space Diffusion Model for Recommendation (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 10 | Yifan Wang 0017 | 27 | 3 | 60 Unbiased Delayed Feedback Label Correction for Conversion Rate Prediction (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 26 Popularity-Aware Alignment and Contrast for Mitigating Popularity Bias (2024) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 11 | Yuta Saito | 25 | 3 | 26 Counterfactual Learning and Evaluation for Recommender Systems: Foundations, Implementations, and Recent Advances (2021) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization 26 A General Framework for Off-Policy Learning with Partially-Observed Reward (2025) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 12 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 25 | 3 | 27 β-DPO: Direct Preference Optimization with Dynamic β (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization 27 AlphaDPO: Adaptive Reward Margin for Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 13 | Zechun Niu | 25 | 3 | 27 Distributionally Robust Optimization for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank 26 Addressing Personalized Bias for Unbiased Learning to Rank (2025) Unbiased Learning to Rank |
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| 14 | Sunhao Dai | 24 | 3 | 60 Dually Enhanced Delayed Feedback Modeling for Streaming Conversion Rate Prediction (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 26 Counteracting User Attention Bias in Music Streaming Recommendation via Reward Modification (2022) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 15 | Chongming Gao COI: co-author | 24 | 3 | 28 Process-Supervised LLM Recommenders via Flow-guided Tuning (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 28 SPRec: Self-Play to Debias LLM-based Recommendation (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 16 | Yimeng Bai | 24 | 3 | 27 GradCraft: Elevating Multi-task Recommendations through Holistic Gradient Crafting (2024) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization 24 Leveraging Watch-time Feedback for Short-Video Recommendations: A Causal Labeling Framework (2023) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 17 | Theresia Veronika Rampisela | 24 | 3 | 24 Evaluation Measures of Individual Item Fairness for Recommender Systems: A Critical Study (2025) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation 24 Measuring Individual User Fairness with User Similarity and Effectiveness Disparity (2026) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation |
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| 18 | Shuchang Liu 0001 | 24 | 3 | 26 Modeling User Retention through Generative Flow Networks (2024) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 26 PrefRec: Recommender Systems with Human Preferences for Reinforcing Long-term User Engagement (2023) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 19 | Jizhi Zhang | 24 | 3 | 27 Large Language Models are Learnable Planners for Long-Term Recommendation (2024) Preference Alignment and Optimization 27 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 20 | Yang Zhang 0072 | 23 | 3 | 27 Reason4Rec: Deliberative User Preference Alignment of Large Language Models for Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization 27 TALLRec: An Effective and Efficient Tuning Framework to Align Large Language Model with Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 21 | Jaime Arguello | 22 | 3 | 28 Improving Aggregated Search Coherence (2015) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval 28 Learning to aggregate vertical results into web search results (2011) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval |
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| 22 | Jie Jiang 0015 | 22 | 3 | 62 Ads Recommendation in a Collapsed and Entangled World (2024) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 27 STEM: Unleashing the Power of Embeddings for Multi-Task Recommendation (2024) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization |
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| 23 | Xiao Zhang 0034 | 22 | 3 | 26 Counterfactual Reward Modification for Streaming Recommendation with Delayed Feedback (2021) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization 26 Enhancing Bandit Algorithms with LLMs for Time-varying User Preferences in Streaming Recommendations (2026) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 24 | Yongqi Li 0001 | 22 | 3 | 27 Efficient Inference for Large Language Model-based Generative Recommendation (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 27 EARN: Efficient Inference Acceleration for LLM-based Generative Recommendation by Register Tokens (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 25 | Han Li 0005 | 22 | 3 | 26 Making Transformer Decoders Better Differentiable Indexers (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 26 DualGR: Generative Retrieval with Long and Short-Term Interests Modeling (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 26 | Xuanhui Wang | 21 | 3 | 28 Situational Context for Ranking in Personal Search (2017) Personalized and Context-Aware Retrieval 26 Learning to Rank in Theory and Practice: From Gradient Boosting to Neural Networks and Unbiased Learning (2019) Unbiased Learning to Rank |
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| 27 | Seongmin Park 0002 | 21 | 3 | 26 Dual Unbiased Recommender Learning for Implicit Feedback (2021) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation 26 Bilateral Self-unbiased Learning from Biased Implicit Feedback (2022) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 28 | Huifeng Guo | 21 | 3 | 25 LLMTreeRec: Unleashing the Power of Large Language Models for Cold-Start Recommendations (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 24 A Comprehensive Survey on Automated Machine Learning for Recommendations (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 31 | Romain Deffayet | 21 | 3 | 25 SARDINE: Simulator for Automated Recommendation in Dynamic and Interactive Environments (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation 25 Generative Slate Recommendation with Reinforcement Learning (2023) Offline RL for Recommendation |
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| 32 | Bo Chen 0023 | 21 | 3 | 26 Towards efficient and effective unlearning of large language models for recommendation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 25 Large language models make sample-efficient recommender systems (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |