Modular Representation Compression: Adapting LLM Representations for Efficient and Effective Recommendation
Abstract
Recently, large language models (LLMs) have advanced recommendation systems (RSs), and recent works have begun to explore how to integrate LLMs into industrial RSs. While most approaches deploy LLMs offline to generate and pre-cache augmented representations for RSs, high-dimensional representations from LLMs introduce substantial storage and computational costs. Thus, it is crucial to compress LLM representations effectively. However, we identify a counterintuitive phenomenon during representation compression: Mid-layer Representation Advantage (MRA), where representations from middle layers of LLMs outperform those from final layers in recommendation tasks. This degraded final layer renders existing compression methods, which typically compress on the final layer, suboptimal. We interpret this based on modularity theory that LLMs develop spontaneous internal functional modularity and force the final layer to specialize in the proxy training task. Thus, we propose Modular Representation Compression (MARC) to explicitly control the modularity of LLMs. First, Modular Adjustment explicitly introduces compression and task adaptation modules, enabling the LLM to operate strictly as a representation-learning module. Next, to ground each module to its specific task, Modular Task Decoupling uses information constraints and different network structures to decouple tasks. Extensive experiments validate that MARC addresses MRA and produces efficient representations. Notably, MARC achieved a 2.82% eCPM lift in an online A/B test within a large-scale commercial search advertising scenario.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Junjie Zhang 0009 | 48 | 71 Review-Enhanced Universal Sequence Representation Learning for Recommender Systems (2025) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 66 Tapping the Potential of Large Language Models as Recommender Systems: A Comprehensive Framework and Empirical Analysis (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 66 Large Language Models are Zero-Shot Rankers for Recommender Systems (2024) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 2 | Weipeng Chen | 43 | 66 LongReD: Mitigating Short-Text Degradation of Long-Context Large Language Models via Restoration Distillation (2025) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 66 HGSVerb: Improving Zero-shot Text Classification via Hierarchical Generative Semantic-Aware Verbalizer (2024) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 41 PQCache: Product Quantization-based KVCache for Long Context LLM Inference (2025) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Xiaoyi Zeng | 41 |
Area-chair candidates (4)
| Pengyue Jia COI: co-author | 43 | 10 papers | |
| Maolin Wang 0001 COI: co-author | 43 | 15 papers | |
| Yankai Chen 0001 COI: co-author | 41 | 6 papers | |
| Xiaoyi Zeng assigned | 41 | 11 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Yang Zhang 0072 | 51 | 3 | 66 Preliminary Study on Incremental Learning for Large Language Model-based Recommender Systems (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 66 Don't Start Over: A Cost-Effective Framework for Migrating Personalized Prompts Between LLMs (2026) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 2 | Bo Chen 0023 COI: author | 51 | 3 | 72 DisCo: Towards Harmonious Disentanglement and Collaboration between Tabular and Semantic Space for Recommendation (2024) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 69 Efficiency Unleashed: Inference Acceleration for LLM-based Recommender Systems with Speculative Decoding (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 3 | Junjie Zhang 0009 assigned | 48 | 3 | 71 Review-Enhanced Universal Sequence Representation Learning for Recommender Systems (2025) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 66 Tapping the Potential of Large Language Models as Recommender Systems: A Comprehensive Framework and Empirical Analysis (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 4 | Yupeng Hou | 47 | 3 | 73 Towards Universal Sequence Representation Learning for Recommender Systems (2022) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 70 Review-Enhanced Universal Sequence Representation Learning for Recommender Systems (2025) Text Embedding and Representation Learning |
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| 5 | Jizhi Zhang | 47 | 3 | 66 Navigating Large Language Models for Recommendation: From Architecture to Learning Paradigms and Deployment (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 52 Is ChatGPT Fair for Recommendation? Evaluating Fairness in Large Language Model Recommendation (2023) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 6 | Yanzhao Zhang | 47 | 3 | 71 Unsupervised Semantic Association Learning with Latent Label Inference (2021) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 66 Text Representation Distillation via Information Bottleneck Principle (2023) Text Embedding and Representation Learning |
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| 7 | Jieming Zhu COI: co-author | 46 | 3 | 63 Can LLMs Outshine Conventional Recommenders? A Comparative Evaluation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 56 EASE: Learning Lightweight Semantic Feature Adapters from Large Language Models for CTR Prediction (2024) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 8 | Huiqiang Jiang | 44 | 3 | 66 Multi-Level Knowledge Distillation for Out-of-Distribution Detection in Text (2023) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 41 RetroInfer: A Vector Storage Engine for Scalable Long-Context LLM Inference (2026) Learned Sparse Retrieval Efficiency |
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| 9 | Bowen Zheng 0005 | 44 | 3 | 51 Adapting Large Language Models by Integrating Collaborative Semantics for Recommendation (2024) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 42 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 10 | Weipeng Chen assigned | 43 | 3 | 66 LongReD: Mitigating Short-Text Degradation of Long-Context Large Language Models via Restoration Distillation (2025) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 66 HGSVerb: Improving Zero-shot Text Classification via Hierarchical Generative Semantic-Aware Verbalizer (2024) Text Embedding and Representation Learning |
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| 11 | Huifeng Guo COI: co-author | 43 | 3 | 67 LLMTreeRec: Unleashing the Power of Large Language Models for Cold-Start Recommendations (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 63 Prompt Tuning as User Inherent Profile Inference Machine (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 12 | Zhengyi Yang 0007 | 43 | 3 | 51 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization 46 A Bi-Step Grounding Paradigm for Large Language Models in Recommendation Systems (2025) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 14 | Jiancan Wu COI: co-author | 43 | 3 | 45 Large Language Model Can Interpret Latent Space of Sequential Recommender (2026) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation 45 LLaRA: Large Language-Recommendation Assistant (2024) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 16 | Bo Peng 0009 | 43 | 3 | 66 eCeLLM: Generalizing Large Language Models for E-commerce from Large-scale, High-quality Instruction Data (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 41 M2: Mixed Models With Preferences, Popularities and Transitions for Next-Basket Recommendation (2023) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
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| 17 | Ziru Liu COI: co-author | 42 | 3 | 66 Learning Empirical Bregman Divergence for Uncertain Distance Representation (2023) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 38 Diff-MSR: A Diffusion Model Enhanced Paradigm for Cold-Start Multi-Scenario Recommendation (2024) Diffusion and Flow Recommenders |
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| 18 | Qijiong Liu COI: co-author | 42 | 3 | 64 Can LLMs Outshine Conventional Recommenders? A Comparative Evaluation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 45 CoST: Contrastive Quantization based Semantic Tokenization for Generative Recommendation (2024) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 19 | Han Li 0005 COI: co-author | 42 | 3 | 72 LEARN: Knowledge Adaptation from Large Language Model to Recommendation for Practical Industrial Application (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 42 Generative Recommender with End-to-End Learnable Item Tokenization (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 20 | Wei Guo 0006 COI: co-author | 42 | 3 | 63 Can LLMs Outshine Conventional Recommenders? A Comparative Evaluation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment 40 Intent-aware Multi-source Contrastive Alignment for Tag-enhanced Recommendation (2023) Graph Contrastive and Self-Supervised Learning |
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| 21 | Hao Liu 0078 | 42 | 3 | 52 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment 39 Mitigating Distribution Shifts in Sequential Recommendation: An Invariance Perspective (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation |
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| 22 | Yongqi Li 0001 | 42 | 3 | 66 EARN: Efficient Inference Acceleration for LLM-based Generative Recommendation by Register Tokens (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking 66 Efficient Inference for Large Language Model-based Generative Recommendation (2025) Generative Retrieval and Ranking |
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| 23 | Lichan Hong | 42 | 3 | 63 Balancing Fine-tuning and RAG: A Hybrid Strategy for Dynamic LLM Recommendation Updates (2025) RAG for Domain Applications 46 PLUM: Adapting Pre-trained Language Models for Industrial-scale Generative Recommendations (2026) Generative Recommendation and Item Tokenization |
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| 24 | Hao Deng 0011 | 42 | 3 | 45 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 43 CSMF: Cascaded Selective Mask Fine-Tuning for Multi-Objective Embedding-Based Retrieval (2025) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization |
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| 25 | Junwei Pan | 42 | 3 | 58 Incremental Learning for LLM-based Tokenization and Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 48 Pre-train, Align, and Disentangle: Empowering Sequential Recommendation with Large Language Models (2025) Sequential and Session-based Recommendation |
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| 26 | Wei Wei 0027 | 42 | 3 | 73 Representation Learning with Large Language Models for Recommendation (2024) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 44 SSLRec: A Self-Supervised Learning Framework for Recommendation (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 27 | Chongming Gao COI: co-author | 41 | 3 | 66 Don't Start Over: A Cost-Effective Framework for Migrating Personalized Prompts Between LLMs (2026) Efficiency and Deployment 47 DLCRec: A Novel Approach for Managing Diversity in LLM-Based Recommender Systems (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 28 | Lianghao Xia | 41 | 3 | 45 Representation Learning with Large Language Models for Recommendation (2024) Collaborative-Semantic Representation Alignment 44 RecLM: Recommendation Instruction Tuning (2025) Preference Alignment and Optimization |
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| 29 | Yinwei Wei | 41 | 3 | 66 Data-efficient Fine-tuning for LLM-based Recommendation (2024) Efficiency and Deployment 38 Online Distillation-enhanced Multi-modal Transformer for Sequential Recommendation (2023) Graph Contrastive and Self-Supervised Learning |
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| 30 | Xubin Ren | 41 | 3 | 74 Representation Learning with Large Language Models for Recommendation (2024) Text Embedding and Representation Learning 45 LLMRec: Large Language Models with Graph Augmentation for Recommendation (2024) LLM-Derived Knowledge Infusion |
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| 32 | Min Hou 0004 COI: co-author | 41 | 3 | 64 RecCocktail: A Generalizable and Efficient Framework for LLM-Based Recommendation (2026) Preference Alignment and Optimization 51 WeaveRec: An LLM-Based Cross-Domain Sequential Recommendation Framework with Model Merging (2026) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 34 | Ed H. Chi | 41 | 3 | 57 PLUM: Adapting Pre-trained Language Models for Industrial-scale Generative Recommendations (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 50 Balancing Fine-tuning and RAG: A Hybrid Strategy for Dynamic LLM Recommendation Updates (2025) RAG for Domain Applications |