FedMM: Federated Collaborative Signal Quantization for Multi-Market CTR Prediction
Abstract
Online platforms such as Amazon and Netflix serve users across multiple countries and regions, underscoring the importance of multi-market recommendation (MMR). Most MMR methods adopt a pre-training and fine-tuning paradigm, in which a unified model is first trained on centralized, global data and subsequently adapted to specific markets. However, this approach ignores the privacy of market data. While traditional federated learning preserves privacy, it typically aims to obtain a global model by aggregating model parameters and does not account for significant market heterogeneity. Additionally, because ID spaces are disjoint across markets, embedding-based aggregation strategies become ineffective. To overcome these challenges, we propose a federated collaborative signal quantization (FedMM) method for multi-market click-through rate (CTR) prediction. Our core idea leverages a discrete codebook mechanism to achieve privacy-preserving transmission and align disjoint ID spaces. We further employ a hierarchical codebook structure to capture cross-market shared patterns and market-specific characteristics. Specifically, we deploy a residual quantized variational autoencoder (RQ-VAE) with a dual-layer codebook mechanism for each market to quantize collaborative embeddings. The first layer utilizes a global federated codebook, updated via aggregation to capture universally shared collaborative patterns, while the second layer maintains a local codebook to learn market-specific semantics. Finally, the learned discrete codes, which integrate both general and specific collaborative signals, are incorporated into downstream CTR models to enhance prediction accuracy across all markets. Extensive experiments on benchmark datasets demonstrate that FedMM significantly improves recommendation performance with privacy guarantees.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Jinxin Hu | 66 | 71 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 62 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 62 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 2 | Yong He 0009 | 64 | 62 MI-DPG: Decomposable Parameter Generation Network Based on Mutual Information for Multi-Scenario Recommendation (2023) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 61 GFlow-FT: Pick a Child Network via Gradient Flow for Efficient Fine-Tuning in Recommendation Systems (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 60 Breaking the Length Barrier: LLM-Enhanced CTR Prediction in Long Textual User Behaviors (2024) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 3 | Yu Zhang 0206 | 60 | 69 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 58 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 56 Global-Distribution Aware Scenario-Specific Variational Representation Learning Framework (2025) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Xiaoyi Zeng | 52 |
Area-chair candidates (5)
| Xiaoyi Zeng assigned | 52 | 11 papers | |
| Leyu Lin | 50 | 15 papers | |
| Yanan Niu | 50 | 15 papers | |
| Kun Gai | 48 | 5 papers | |
| Weiming Liu 0005 | 47 | 8 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Junwei Pan COI: co-author | 67 | 3 | 69 Incremental Learning for LLM-based Tokenization and Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 58 Ads Recommendation in a Collapsed and Entangled World (2024) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 2 | Ke Fei | 66 | 3 | 54 Stable and Adaptive Fusion for Multi-domain Multi-task Recommendation (2026) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction 52 Entire-Space Variational Information Exploitation for Post-Click Conversion Rate Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 3 | Jinxin Hu assigned | 66 | 3 | 71 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 62 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 4 | Yong He 0009 assigned | 64 | 3 | 62 MI-DPG: Decomposable Parameter Generation Network Based on Mutual Information for Multi-Scenario Recommendation (2023) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 61 GFlow-FT: Pick a Child Network via Gradient Flow for Efficient Fine-Tuning in Recommendation Systems (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 5 | Yu Zhang 0206 assigned | 60 | 3 | 69 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 58 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 6 | Qiang Luo 0004 | 57 | 3 | 62 One Model to Serve All: Star Topology Adaptive Recommender for Multi-Domain CTR Prediction (2021) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 61 DiffGRM: Diffusion-based Generative Recommendation Model (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 7 | Jiangxia Cao | 57 | 3 | 52 ChorusCVR: Chorus Supervision for Entire Space Post-Click Conversion Rate Modeling (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 52 A Multi-modal Modeling Framework for Cold-start Short-video Recommendation (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
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| 8 | Jie Jiang 0015 COI: co-author | 56 | 3 | 69 Incremental Learning for LLM-based Tokenization and Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 59 Empowering Large Language Model for Sequential Recommendation via Multimodal Embeddings and Semantic IDs (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 9 | Yupeng Hou | 56 | 3 | 81 Learning Vector-Quantized Item Representation for Transferable Sequential Recommenders (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 71 Towards Large Generative Recommendation: A Tokenization Perspective (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 10 | Jieming Zhu COI: co-author | 56 | 3 | 71 CoST: Contrastive Quantization based Semantic Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 71 UNGER: Generative Recommendation with A Unified Code via Semantic and Collaborative Integration (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 11 | Yi Zhang 0103 | 54 | 3 | 56 AdaGIN: Adaptive Graph Interaction Network for Click-Through Rate Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 52 TF4CTR: Twin Focus Framework for CTR Prediction via Adaptive Sample Differentiation (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 12 | Xuanhua Yang | 54 | 3 | 60 Hierarchical User Long-term Behavior Modeling for Click-Through Rate Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 55 AdaSparse: Learning Adaptively Sparse Structures for Multi-Domain Click-Through Rate Prediction (2022) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 13 | Lichan Hong | 52 | 3 | 71 Better Generalization with Semantic IDs: A Case Study in Ranking for Recommendations (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 62 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 15 | Lantao Hu | 52 | 3 | 68 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 67 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 16 | Hao Liu 0078 | 52 | 3 | 55 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment 51 MCRPL: A Pretrain, Prompt, and Fine-tune Paradigm for Non-overlapping Many-to-one Cross-domain Recommendation (2024) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR |
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| 17 | Xin Zhang 0091 | 51 | 3 | 60 Deep Dynamic Interest Learning With Session Local and Global Consistency for Click-Through Rate Predictions (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 60 Deep Session Heterogeneity-Aware Network for Click Through Rate Prediction (2024) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 18 | Wei Guo 0006 COI: co-author | 51 | 3 | 52 Enhancing Explicit and Implicit Feature Interactions via Information Sharing for Parallel Deep CTR Models (2021) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 52 DLF: Enhancing Explicit-Implicit Interaction via Dynamic Low-Order-Aware Fusion for CTR Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 20 | Hao Deng 0011 | 50 | 3 | 62 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 61 REG4Rec: Reasoning-Enhanced Generative Model for Large-Scale Recommendation Systems (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 22 | Bowen Zheng 0005 | 50 | 3 | 71 Bridging Textual-Collaborative Gap through Semantic Codes for Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 62 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 23 | Qijiong Liu | 49 | 3 | 71 CoST: Contrastive Quantization based Semantic Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 71 Learning Multi-aspect Item Palette: A Semantic Tokenization Framework for Generative Recommendation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 24 | Ed H. Chi | 49 | 3 | 71 Better Generalization with Semantic IDs: A Case Study in Ranking for Recommendations (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 68 Recommender Systems with Generative Retrieval (2023) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 26 | Shuchang Liu 0001 | 48 | 3 | 60 Distinguished Quantized Guidance for Diffusion-based Sequence Recommendation (2025) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders 54 M3oE: Multi-Domain Multi-Task Mixture-of Experts Recommendation Framework (2024) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction |
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| 27 | Bo Chen 0023 COI: co-author | 48 | 3 | 51 PLATE: A Prompt-Enhanced Paradigm for Multi-Scenario Recommendations (2023) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction 51 Generative Representational Learning of Foundation Models for Recommendation (2026) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 29 | Yongxin Ni COI: co-author | 47 | 3 | 60 Multi-Modality is All You Need for Transferable Recommender Systems (2024) Multimodal Generative Recommendation 57 NineRec: A Benchmark Dataset Suite for Evaluating Transferable Recommendation (2025) Multimodal Generative Recommendation |
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| 30 | Bo Peng 0009 | 46 | 3 | 46 Multi-modality meets re-learning: mitigating negative transfer in sequential recommendation (2025) Sequential Recommendation with Side and Multimodal Information 46 M2: Mixed Models With Preferences, Popularities and Transitions for Next-Basket Recommendation (2023) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
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| 31 | Han Li 0005 | 46 | 3 | 68 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 47 DiffusionGS: Generative Search with Query Conditioned Diffusion in Kuaishou (2026) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 32 | Ching Law | 46 | 3 | 52 DPEO: Dynamic Preference Evolution Optimization for Self-Evolving CTR Prediction (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 49 Reasoning-Grounded Intent Injection for Generative Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 33 | Yongjing Hao | 45 | 3 | 52 Exploiting Intra and Inter-field Feature Interaction with Self-Attentive Network for CTR Prediction (2021) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 43 Feature-Level Deeper Self-Attention Network With Contrastive Learning for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation |
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| 34 | Ke Wang 0038 | 45 | 3 | 50 Enhancing Cross-Domain Recommendation with Plug-In Contrastive Representations from Large Language Models (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 50 Contrastive Multi-view Interest Learning for Cross-domain Sequential Recommendation (2024) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation |
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| 35 | Huifeng Guo COI: co-author | 45 | 3 | 54 PLATE: A Prompt-Enhanced Paradigm for Multi-Scenario Recommendations (2023) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction 52 Scenario-Wise Rec: A Multi-Scenario Recommendation Benchmark (2025) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |