Exploring Test-time Scaling via Prediction Merging on Large-Scale Recommendation
Abstract
Inspired by the success of language models (LM), scaling up deep learning recommendation systems (DLRS) has become a recent trend in the community. All previous methods tend to scale up the model parameters during training time. However, how to efficiently utilize and scale up computational resources during test time remains underexplored, which can prove to be a scaling-efficient approach and bring orthogonal improvements in LM domains. The key point in applying test-time scaling to DLRS lies in effectively generating diverse yet meaningful outputs for the same instance. We propose two ways: One is to explore the heterogeneity of different model architectures. The other is to utilize the randomness of model initialization under a homogeneous architecture. The evaluation is conducted across eight models, including both classic and SOTA models, on three benchmarks. Sufficient evidence proves the effectiveness of both solutions. We further prove that under the same inference budget, test-time scaling can outperform parameter scaling. Our test-time scaling can also be seamlessly accelerated with the increase in parallel servers when deployed online, without affecting the inference time on the user side. Code is available here. https://github.com/aTitye/TTS4CTR.
Assigned reviewers
| # | Reviewer | Match | Why (closest evidence publications in the taxonomy) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ke Fei | 72 | 100 Entire-Space Variational Information Exploitation for Post-Click Conversion Rate Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 100 Inverse Contrastive Representation Learning for Post-Click Conversion Rate Estimation (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 46 Stable and Adaptive Fusion for Multi-domain Multi-task Recommendation (2026) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction |
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| 2 | Junwei Pan | 56 | 100 Long-Sequence Recommendation Models Need Decoupled Embeddings (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 100 From Feature Interaction to Feature Generation: A Generative Paradigm of CTR Prediction Models (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 100 Understanding the Ranking Loss for Recommendation with Sparse User Feedback (2024) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
Area chair
| Area chair | Match | |
|---|---|---|
| Kun Gai | 43 |
Area-chair candidates (6)
| Kun Gai assigned | 43 | 5 papers | |
| Yanan Niu | 43 | 15 papers | |
| Xiaoyi Zeng | 40 | 11 papers | |
| Leyu Lin | 37 | 15 papers | |
| Yankai Chen 0001 COI: co-author | 36 | 6 papers | |
| Xin Xin 0003 COI: co-author | 36 | 10 papers |
Candidates from the panel ranked by match score
| # | Reviewer | Match | Load | Why | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Ke Fei assigned | 72 | 3 | 100 Entire-Space Variational Information Exploitation for Post-Click Conversion Rate Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 100 Inverse Contrastive Representation Learning for Post-Click Conversion Rate Estimation (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 2 | Junwei Pan assigned | 56 | 3 | 100 Long-Sequence Recommendation Models Need Decoupled Embeddings (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 100 From Feature Interaction to Feature Generation: A Generative Paradigm of CTR Prediction Models (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 3 | Yong He 0009 | 53 | 3 | 100 SeqGen: A Sequence Generator via User Side Information for Behavior Sparsity in Recommendation (2023) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 76 MI-DPG: Decomposable Parameter Generation Network Based on Mutual Information for Multi-Scenario Recommendation (2023) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 4 | Xin Zhang 0091 | 52 | 3 | 70 Deep Dynamic Interest Learning With Session Local and Global Consistency for Click-Through Rate Predictions (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 70 Deep Session Heterogeneity-Aware Network for Click Through Rate Prediction (2024) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 5 | Jinxin Hu | 50 | 3 | 100 Infer As You Train: A Symmetric Paradigm of Masked Generative for Click-Through Rate Prediction (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 70 Counterfactual Multi-task Learning for Delayed Conversion Modeling in E-commerce Sales Pre-Promotion (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 6 | Jie Jiang 0015 | 47 | 3 | 100 Deep Pattern Network for Click-Through Rate Prediction (2024) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 100 AutoAttention: Automatic Field Pair Selection for Attention in User Behavior Modeling (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 7 | Yi Zhang 0103 | 47 | 3 | 100 TF4CTR: Twin Focus Framework for CTR Prediction via Adaptive Sample Differentiation (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 100 SimCEN: Simple Contrast-enhanced Network for CTR Prediction (2024) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 8 | Yu Zhang 0206 | 47 | 3 | 100 Infer As You Train: A Symmetric Paradigm of Masked Generative for Click-Through Rate Prediction (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 67 LREA: Low-Rank Efficient Attention on Modeling Long-Term User Behaviors for CTR Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 9 | Wei Guo 0006 COI: co-author | 46 | 3 | 100 Enhancing Explicit and Implicit Feature Interactions via Information Sharing for Parallel Deep CTR Models (2021) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 100 DLF: Enhancing Explicit-Implicit Interaction via Dynamic Low-Order-Aware Fusion for CTR Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 10 | Yuta Saito | 44 | 3 | 73 Doubly Robust Estimator for Ranking Metrics with Post-Click Conversions (2020) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 46 Counterfactual Evaluation and Learning for Interactive Systems: Foundations, Implementations, and Recent Advances (2022) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 11 | Xuanhua Yang | 43 | 3 | 72 Hierarchical User Long-term Behavior Modeling for Click-Through Rate Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 48 AdaSparse: Learning Adaptively Sparse Structures for Multi-Domain Click-Through Rate Prediction (2022) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 14 | Qiang Luo 0004 | 43 | 3 | 76 One Model to Serve All: Star Topology Adaptive Recommender for Multi-Domain CTR Prediction (2021) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 41 MPFormer: Adaptive Framework for Industrial Multi-Task Personalized Sequential Retriever (2025) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization |
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| 15 | Yimeng Bai | 42 | 3 | 61 Unconstrained Monotonic Calibration of Predictions in Deep Ranking Systems (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 41 GradCraft: Elevating Multi-task Recommendations through Holistic Gradient Crafting (2024) Multi-Task and Multi-Objective Optimization |
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| 16 | Lichan Hong | 42 | 3 | 100 DCN V2: Improved Deep & Cross Network and Practical Lessons for Web-scale Learning to Rank Systems (2021) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 48 Enhancing Online Ranking Systems via Multi-Surface Co-Training for Content Understanding (2025) Content-Based Transferable Recommendation |
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| 17 | Jiangxia Cao | 42 | 3 | 100 ChorusCVR: Chorus Supervision for Entire Space Post-Click Conversion Rate Modeling (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 41 CDRNP: Cross-Domain Recommendation to Cold-Start Users via Neural Process (2024) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR |
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| 18 | Jieming Zhu COI: co-author | 42 | 3 | 65 Data-free Knowledge Distillation for Reusing Recommendation Models (2023) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 64 TayFCS: Towards Light Feature Combination Selection for Deep Recommender Systems (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction |
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| 19 | Bo Peng 0009 | 42 | 3 | 65 SWaT: Statistical Modeling of Video Watch Time through User Behavior Analysis (2025) User Behavior and Search Interaction 44 M2: Mixed Models With Preferences, Popularities and Transitions for Next-Basket Recommendation (2023) Efficient and Long-Sequence Sequential Recommendation |
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| 21 | Qijiong Liu | 39 | 3 | 68 Boosting Deep CTR Prediction with a Plug-and-Play Pre-trainer for News Recommendation (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 45 Can LLMs Outshine Conventional Recommenders? A Comparative Evaluation (2025) Efficiency and Deployment |
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| 22 | Shuchang Liu 0001 | 39 | 3 | 46 M3oE: Multi-Domain Multi-Task Mixture-of Experts Recommendation Framework (2024) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction 46 PrefRec: Recommender Systems with Human Preferences for Reinforcing Long-term User Engagement (2023) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization |
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| 23 | Yongjing Hao | 38 | 3 | 100 Exploiting Intra and Inter-field Feature Interaction with Self-Attentive Network for CTR Prediction (2021) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 42 Click is not equal to purchase: multi-task reinforcement learning for multi-behavior recommendation (2023) Multi-Behavior Recommendation |
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| 24 | Ching Law | 38 | 3 | 100 DPEO: Dynamic Preference Evolution Optimization for Self-Evolving CTR Prediction (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 60 Stream Normalization for CTR Prediction (2025) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms |
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| 25 | Fei Sun 0001 | 38 | 3 | 42 Improving End-to-End Sequential Recommendations with Intent-aware Diversification (2020) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation 42 Multi-interest Diversification for End-to-end Sequential Recommendation (2022) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation |
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| 26 | Hao Deng 0011 | 38 | 3 | 42 HeterRec: Heterogeneous Information Transformer for Scalable Sequential Recommendation (2025) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs 40 MMQ: Multimodal Mixture-of-Quantization Tokenization for Semantic ID Generation and User Behavioral Adaptation (2026) Item Tokenization and Semantic IDs |
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| 27 | Hao Liu 0078 | 37 | 3 | 41 DA-DAN: A Dual Adversarial Domain Adaption Network for Unsupervised Non-overlapping Cross-domain Recommendation (2024) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR 38 Mitigating Distribution Shifts in Sequential Recommendation: An Invariance Perspective (2025) Contrastive and Self-Supervised Sequential Recommendation |
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| 28 | Yifan Wang 0017 | 37 | 3 | 60 Unbiased Delayed Feedback Label Correction for Conversion Rate Prediction (2023) Advertising and Auction Mechanisms 49 Improving Long-tail User CTR Prediction via Hierarchical Distribution Alignment (2025) Bias Mitigation Methods |
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| 29 | Jin Chen 0008 | 37 | 3 | 65 An Incremental Update Framework for Online Recommenders with Data-Driven Prior (2023) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 42 Enhancing Multi-Behavior Sequential Recommenders with Behavior-Aware Regularization (2025) Multi-Behavior Recommendation |
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| 30 | Yongxin Ni | 37 | 3 | 44 An Image Dataset for Benchmarking Recommender Systems with Raw Pixels (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation 41 Bridging NIP and MLM: A Unified Meta-Learning Framework for Sequential Recommendation (2026) Meta-Learning for Cold-Start Recommendation |
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| 31 | Lantao Hu | 37 | 3 | 46 AURO: Reinforcement Learning for Adaptive User Retention Optimization in Recommender Systems (2025) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization 42 Comprehensive List Generation for Multi-Generator Reranking (2025) Recommendation with Search and Ranking |
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| 32 | Bo Chen 0023 COI: co-author | 37 | 3 | 52 PLATE: A Prompt-Enhanced Paradigm for Multi-Scenario Recommendations (2023) Multi-Scenario and Multi-Domain CTR Prediction 40 A Comprehensive Survey on Automated Machine Learning for Recommendations (2024) Recommendation Systems and Evaluation |
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| 33 | Min Hou 0004 | 37 | 3 | 65 Clustering based Behavior Sampling with Long Sequential Data for CTR Prediction (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction 45 GoRec: A Generative Cold-start Recommendation Framework (2023) Content-Based Transferable Recommendation |