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HyFormer: Revisiting the Roles of Sequence Modeling and Feature Interaction in CTR Prediction

sigir26-220 · Full research paper · Yunwen Huang, Shiyong Hong, Xijun Xiao, Jinqiu Jin, Xuanyuan Luo, Zhe Wang, Zheng Chai, S S Wu, Yuchao Zheng, Jingjian Lin
CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction · 100%
Abstract

Industrial large-scale recommendation models (LRMs) face the challenge of jointly modeling long-range user behavior sequences and heterogeneous non-sequential features under strict efficiency constraints. However, most existing architectures employ a decoupled pipeline: long sequences are first compressed with a query-token based sequence compressor like LONGER, followed by fusion with dense features through token-mixing modules like RankMixer, which thereby limits both the representation capacity and the interaction flexibility. This paper presents HyFormer, a unified hybrid transformer architecture that tightly integrates long-sequence modeling and feature interaction into a single backbone. From the perspective of sequence modeling, we revisit and redesign query tokens in LRMs, and frame the LRM modeling task as an alternating optimization process that integrates two core components: Query Decoding which expands non-sequential features into Global Tokens and performs long sequence decoding over layer-wise key-value representations of long behavioral sequences; and Query Boosting which enhances cross-query and cross-sequence heterogeneous interactions via efficient token mixing. The two complementary mechanisms are performed iteratively to refine semantic representations across layers. Extensive experiments on billion-scale industrial datasets demonstrate that HyFormer consistently outperforms strong LONGER and RankMixer baselines under comparable parameter and FLOPs budgets, while exhibiting superior scaling behavior with increasing parameters and FLOPs. Large-scale online A/B tests in high-traffic production systems further validate its effectiveness, showing significant gains over deployed state-of-the-art models. These results highlight the practicality and scalability of HyFormer as a unified modeling framework for industrial LRMs.

Assigned reviewers

#ReviewerMatchWhy (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
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 AutoAttention: Automatic Field Pair Selection for Attention in User Behavior Modeling (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction

Area chair

Area chairMatch
Yanan Niu 43
Area-chair candidates (6)
Kun Gai COI: co-author 435 papers
Yanan Niu assigned 4315 papers
Xiaoyi Zeng 4011 papers
Leyu Lin 3715 papers
Yankai Chen 0001 366 papers
Xin Xin 0003 3610 papers

Candidates from the panel ranked by match score

#ReviewerMatchLoadWhy
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
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
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
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
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
6 Jie Jiang 0015 47 3
100 AutoAttention: Automatic Field Pair Selection for Attention in User Behavior Modeling (2022) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction
100 Deep Pattern Network for Click-Through Rate Prediction (2024) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction
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
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
9 Wei Guo 0006 46 3
100 DLF: Enhancing Explicit-Implicit Interaction via Dynamic Low-Order-Aware Fusion for CTR Prediction (2025) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction
100 Enhancing Explicit and Implicit Feature Interactions via Information Sharing for Parallel Deep CTR Models (2021) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction
10 Yuta Saito 44 3
73 Doubly Robust Estimator for Ranking Metrics with Post-Click Conversions (2020) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction
46 A General Framework for Off-Policy Learning with Partially-Observed Reward (2025) Long-Term Engagement and Retention Optimization
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
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
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
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
17 Jiangxia Cao COI: co-author 42 3
100 ChorusCVR: Chorus Supervision for Entire Space Post-Click Conversion Rate Modeling (2026) CTR and Conversion Rate Prediction
41 Personalized Multi-Interest Modeling for Cross-Domain Recommendation to Cold-Start Users (2025) Domain Adaptation and Disentangled Representation for CDR
18 Jieming Zhu 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
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
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
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
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
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
25 Fei Sun 0001 COI: co-author 38 3
42 Multi-interest Diversification for End-to-end Sequential Recommendation (2022) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation
42 Improving End-to-End Sequential Recommendations with Intent-aware Diversification (2020) Multi-Behavior and Multi-Interest Sequential Recommendation
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
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
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
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
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
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 Unsupervised Ranking Ensemble Model for Recommendation (2024) Recommendation with Search and Ranking
32 Bo Chen 0023 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
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