Generative Auto-Bidding with Unified Modeling and Exploration
Abstract
Automated bidding is central to modern digital advertising. Early rule-based methods lacked adaptability, while subsequent Reinforcement Learning approaches modeled bidding as a Markov Decision Process but struggled with long-term dependencies. Recent generative models show promise, yet they lack explicit mechanisms to balance exploration and safety, relying solely on action perturbations or trajectory guidance without a safety fallback. This results in inefficient exploration and elevated financial risk for advertising platforms. To address this gap, we propose GUIDE (Generative Auto-Bidding with Unified Modeling and Exploration), a framework that synergistically integrates directed exploration with a safe fallback mechanism. GUIDE employs a Decision Transformer (DT) to jointly model historical bidding actions and environmental state transitions. A Q-value module guides the DT's exploration via regularization constraints, while an Inverse Dynamics Module (IDM) leverages DT-predicted future states to infer robust, behaviorally consistent actions as a safe policy fallback. The Q-value module then adaptively selects the final action between these two options, balancing exploration and safety. Together, these components form an integrated "explore-safeguard-select" pipeline that unifies efficiency and safety. We conduct extensive experiments on public datasets, in simulated auction environments, and through large-scale online deployment on Taobao, a leading Chinese advertising platform. Results show GUIDE consistently outperforms state-of-the-art baselines across all scenarios. In real-world deployment, GUIDE achieves notable gains: +4.10% ad GMV, +1.40% ad clicks, +1.66% ad cost, and +3.52% ad ROI, demonstrating its effectiveness and strong industrial applicability.
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 DARA: Few-shot Budget Allocation in Online Advertising via In-Context Decision Making with RL-Finetuned LLMs (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 100 Trajectory-wise Iterative Reinforcement Learning Framework for Auto-bidding (2024) 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 DARA: Few-shot Budget Allocation in Online Advertising via In-Context Decision Making with RL-Finetuned LLMs (2026) 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 DARA: Few-shot Budget Allocation in Online Advertising via In-Context Decision Making with RL-Finetuned LLMs (2026) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Fernando Diaz 0001 | 21 |
Area-chair candidates (2)
| Yanan Niu COI: co-author | 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 DARA: Few-shot Budget Allocation in Online Advertising via In-Context Decision Making with RL-Finetuned LLMs (2026) 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 |
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| 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 COI: co-author | 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 Graph-Structured Driven Dual Adaptation for Mitigating Popularity Bias (2026) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation |
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| 11 | Yuta Saito | 25 | 3 | 26 Long-term Off-Policy Evaluation and Learning (2024) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization 26 Counterfactual Learning and Evaluation for Recommender Systems: Foundations, Implementations, and Recent Advances (2021) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 12 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 25 | 3 | 27 AlphaDPO: Adaptive Reward Margin for Direct Preference Optimization (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization 27 β-DPO: Direct Preference Optimization with Dynamic β (2024) 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 | 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 LabelCraft: Empowering Short Video Recommendations with Automated Label Crafting (2024) 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 Relevance-aware Individual Item Fairness Measures for Recommender Systems: Limitations and Usage Guidelines (2026) Fairness Metrics and Evaluation |
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| 18 | Shuchang Liu 0001 COI: co-author | 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 Vertical selection in the presence of unlabeled verticals (2010) 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 COI: co-author | 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 Bilateral Self-unbiased Learning from Biased Implicit Feedback (2022) Popularity Bias and Debiasing in Recommendation 26 Dual Unbiased Recommender Learning for Implicit Feedback (2021) 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 |